Treading Water: A Novel

By Anna Zook

Clara Hayes once swam for the national team, but after an explosive incident at the Olympic Trials, she retired and reinvented herself as a children's book illustrator. The quiet, solitary work allows her to be creative on her own terms. Until recently.

Now, struggling with a creative block and growing pressure from her agent to finish her next manuscript, Clara and her cat escape to Seabrook, Washington, the coastal town where her grandmother once lived. Officially, she's there to sort through her grandmother's things and decide what to do with the property that's now hers. Unofficially, she's grasping at straws to try and stop her world from burning in the whirlwind fire-tornado of her mental state.

Enter Eli, a former college swimmer who now runs the town's open water swim program and helps out as a local handyman. He's calm, grounded, and a bit of a mystery. When he asks Clara to help him with his kids' swim fundraiser (in exchange for help fixing up the cottage), they strike up a cautious friendship-snarky, sincere, and surprisingly tender.

As Clara slowly reconciles with her grandma's memory, her unstable past, and her complicated feelings about the water, her blocks begin to loosen. She starts a new story, inspired by the ocean and its quiet magic . . . and maybe by Eli, too.

But when her past trauma and her new beginnings clash in unexpected ways, Clara has to make a terrifying choice: will she continue to lose everything she loves, or will she decide it's time to pick up the pieces?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GGP75Y31
• ISBN13: 9798243613279
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 206 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.5" x 6.0"