The Lifeguard

The Lifeguard combines Mary Morris's consummate craft as a storyteller with her gift for dramatic travel writing. In the title story, a teenage lifeguard sees his mystique among the girls on the beach dissolve in a panicked moment when he cannot save a child. In "The Glass-Bottom Boat," a mother on her first trip abroad learns about trust from a solicitous stranger.

The Lifeguard is a powerful collection of ten short stories that shows Morris's great sensitivity to men and women at moments of turbulence, uncertainty, and crisis.

Morris's books include the novels House Arrest, The Night Sky, Crossroads, and The Waiting Room; the travel memoirs Nothing to Declare and Wall to Wall; and the highly acclaimed story collections Vanishing Animals and Other Stories and The Bus of Dreams. A recipient of the Rome Prize for Literature, she teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn, New York.