How to Walk on Water

And Other Stories

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Pub Date Oct 01 2020 | Archive Date Sep 23 2020

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Description

In this spellbinding debut story collection, characters willingly open their doors to trouble. An investment banker falls for a self-made artist who turns the rooms of her apartment into eerie art installations. An au pair imagines her mundane life as film noir, endangering the infant in her care. A son pieces together the brutal attack his mother survived when he was a baby. These stories bristle with menace and charm with intimate revelations. Through nimble prose and considerable powers of observation, Swearingen takes us from Chicago, Minneapolis, and Northern Michigan, to Seattle, Venice, and elsewhere. She explores not only what it means to survive in a world marked by violence and uncertainty, but also how to celebrate what is most alive.

~Winner of the 2018 New American Fiction Prize.

In this spellbinding debut story collection, characters willingly open their doors to trouble. An investment banker falls for a self-made artist who turns the rooms of her apartment into eerie...


A Note From the Publisher

Rachel Swearingen’s stories and essays have appeared in VICE, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, Off Assignment, Agni, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2015 Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in Fiction, a 2012 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and the 2011 Mississippi Review Prize in Fiction. In 2019, she was named one of 30 Writers to Watch by the Guild Literary Complex. She holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and a PhD from Western Michigan University, and teaches at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.

Rachel Swearingen’s stories and essays have appeared in VICE, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, Off Assignment, Agni, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2015...


Advance Praise

How to Walk on Water is one of the best debuts I’ve read in years. Lovely and haunting, these stories make my pulse beat harder, my breath catch, my heart break. Margaret Atwood said of the short story, “You need the Ancient Mariner element, the Scheherazade element: a sense of urgency. This is the story I must tell; this is the story you must hear.” This book is full of stories that must be told, stories you must hear. Rachel Swearingen is the real deal – a masterful writer, always in control, always holding the reader in the palm of her hand. On the strength of this book, I’ll read everything she writes.

— John McNally, author of The Book of Ralph


"The nine stories in Swearingen’s auspicious debut showcase a gift for well-placed, revealing details.... Each of the intriguing entries builds suspense before a gratifying or lingering payoff. This crafty collection is worth a look.

— Publishers Weekly


"The characters of Rachel Swearingen’s beguiling short story collection sparkle with charisma, living high on testing boundaries ... In the shocking and appealing stories of How to Walk on Water, characters meet every ill-advised “what if?” with oneupmanship, resulting in dangers and delights.”

— Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreward Reviews


How to Walk on Water is one of those rare books I encounter two or three times a year if I’m lucky, books I not only want to read again but know with certainty I will. Rachel Swearingen is a writer of extraordinary range and talent, wholly sui generis. Her sense of humor is fresh and wonderfully off-kilter, and her understanding of the contradictions of the human heart is profound.

Christine Sneed, author of Little Known Facts and The Virginity of Famous Men


How to Walk on Water is a beautiful and timeless collection full of mystery. At the mercy of happenstance and calamity, these strangely familiar characters find the stark realities of their lives have become surreal. Swearingen's assured voice, styled with lyrical noir, cuts through like a howl heard in the night. 

--Melinda Moustakis, author of Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and a 5 Under 35 selection by the National Book Foundation


Buckle up and prepare to be haunted, moved, and to laugh when you’d least expect it. Swearingen’s visionary writing illuminates the dark corners of the human heart. Her complex and troubled characters will take you down the dark roads of the North Woods, or into the cramped confines of a haunted Chicago brownstone. You’re in the hands of a clever and generous writer, whose ability to create whole characters and to deliver smart plot twists never disappoints.

— Eileen Favorite, author of The Heroines

How to Walk on Water is one of the best debuts I’ve read in years. Lovely and haunting, these stories make my pulse beat harder, my breath catch, my heart break. Margaret Atwood said of the short...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781941561225
PRICE $14.95 (USD)

Average rating from 28 members


Featured Reviews

Haunting, beautifully written short story collection from a writer to watch. The stories plunge into intense, off-kilter situations. The settings focus on the Midwest; the title story is set in Seattle. The images are keenly observed and compressed, extending beyond the frame of the page to suggest backstory and foreshadow the future -- the forgotten mirror, the torn postcard, the open can of corn. My two favorite stories were "Boys on a Veranda" and "Advice for the Haunted," seemingly but vaguely linked in an enticing way.

Highly recommended.

Many thanks to NetGalley and New American Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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Do I have to stop saying I’m not a fan of short story collections now? This is the third this month I’ve very much enjoyed. These are dark and haunting and very easy to fly through.

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How to Walk on Water is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It’s one of those books that you’re sad to finish because you just want the experience to continue. Characters who are deeply flawed but you find yourself rooting for them.

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A stunning debut collection, so well written, imaginative, original. Each is a noir gem that haunts, and I'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite.

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I really enjoyed this collection. The stories (and the whole book) were reasonably short and easy to read. The stories weren't too similar. Each one featured a character I believed in, but who surprised me - they were each so different from me in their own ways. Well done to the author for creating such a range of characters and telling their stories in such brevity!

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