How Not to Drown (ePub)

From WILLA Literary Award winning author Jaimee Wriston comes a novel for fans of Jami Attenberg and Jonathan Tropper about a single-minded grandmother who reluctantly learns a thing or two about what life is really all about from her mischievous new granddaughter.

Former model Amelia MacQueen has lost her favorite son, Gavin-and let's face it, favorite member of her family-to a suspicious drowning, for which her daughter-in-law has been convicted of voluntary manslaughter and incarcerated. Amelia has been awarded temporary custody of Gavin and Cassie's twelve-year-old daughter, Heaven, which is a name at which Amelia cannot help but scoff, but decides to put her best foot forward anyway, offering Heaven an equally strange but most importantly, young-enough sounding name that Amelia doesn't actually have to imagine herself as elderly: Grandmelia. But as it turns out, Heaven is anything but.

The daughter of drug addicts, who'd been mostly left to her own devices, Heaven does not appreciate Grandmelia's constant critical ministrations, and bonds instead with Uncle Daniel, Amelia's older, agoraphobic son, who never leaves his bedroom. Through the wall between their rooms, Daniel spins Celtic tales for Heaven from the Isle of Skye, where the family's ancestors lived. As a result of a particularly captivating tale, Heaven decides that the best way to deal with the bullying she is getting in middle school is to become a siren from one of Uncle Daniels's stories who sings "drowning songs" in the swim team pool, luring mean girl Bethany Harrison under at the deep end. As if that doesn't land her in enough trouble, Amelia comes home one day, after visiting her daughter-in-law in prison, and finds her granddaughter serving Oreos to the cops who picked her up for "snaking" junk food from the neighborhood convenience store.

For as much as Amelia loved Gavin, Heaven is the last thing Amelia would have asked for, but when Heaven goes missing during a particularly dangerous storm one night, Amelia is forced to reexamine her outlook on family. In vivid, cadenced prose, Jaimee Wriston tells wry multi-generational tale of redemption, the bonds that make and break a family, and the power of storytelling.