As Lucy Clarke's Swimming at Night begins, Katie Greene opens the door to two policemen late one night to be told that her sister, Mia, is dead in Bali. According to two eyewitnesses, it was definitely a suicide: she jumped off a cliff into the sea.
The sisters could not be more different, they've had their difficulties, especially when their mum was dying. Katie, three years older than Mia, is the structured, make-a-list type. She's dependable, holds a good job, is engaged to a suitable man; Mia is the wild child, fearless, irresponsible, with nary a thought for tomorrow. Six months before her death, she set out on an open-ended trip with Finn, her best friend since childhood.
Mia's belongings are returned to Katie. Among them, she finds a journal that records everything about the trip--until Mia left Finn and traveled to Bali alone. Why? Katie leaves her home, her job and her fiancé to travel in Mia's footsteps, following the journal, looking for answers. Clarke takes the reader through Mia's interior journey, alternating between her revelatory journal passages and Katie's discoveries. The journal provides a window into Mia's psyche, her low self-esteem and her reasons for acting out. Its entries form the heart of Clarke's narrative, leading us to an understanding of who Mia was--and how she got that way.
Despite their differences and difficulties, Katie and Mia were sisters to the end, sharing bonds of love and friendship, strained but never broken. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.