Ellice Littlejohn escaped her dead-end town while healing from her traumatic childhood to earn an Ivy League law degree and become a firm’s only black corporate attorney. But she is full of secrets even her closest friends don’t know. When she arrives at work one morning and finds the married man she’s dating, a man who happens to be her boss, is dead, her secrets are revealed publicly, one by one, to her horror.

We must have Olympic fever because we begin with a brief history of the global games, which, from the beginning, always included swimming. Then, we dive into a small but mighty masterpiece by Julie Otsuka, The Swimmers. This is a book about routine. Comforting routine and unmindful routine. It is about what happens to us when we lose our routines. It is about who we are within the groups we form and who we are as individuals. It may also be about disruption and death. Judge for yourself.