"Sitting alone beside the languorous blue waters of the lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach contemplates the men at the hotel bar. She has been happily married for twenty-seven years and has no reason to escape the life she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels by ferry here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover. Across sultry Caribbean evenings full of salsa and boleros, lotharios,...

Old Order Amish Ivy Zook believes freedom is finally within her reach. She's wrestling with the need to shed her community's ways so she can grow the business of her dreams: planning parties. As long as she's stuck living without modernization, she can barely get her business on its feet. But if she leaves too soon, she'll cause trouble for her sister, Holly, who is planning her wedding to Joshua Smucker. All their plans become twice as complicated...

"In Seventeen, Friendship, and Swimming, Colombe Schneck orchestrates a coming-of-age in three movements....[T]hey invite the reader into a decades-long evolution of sexuality, bodily autonomy, friendship, and loss. Schneck’s prose maintains an unwavering intimacy, whether conjuring a teenage abortion in the midst of a privileged Parisian upbringing, the nuance of a long friendship, or a midlife romance." --publisher's website