A tender, madcap tale of hitchhiking, lonely hearts, first love, queer dreaming, and the great postal workers’ strike of 1970— a second novel by the author of Agatha of Little Neon.
It is March 1970. Sibby is on the run. Armed with a fold-up knife, a map, and a letter to the woman she loves from afar, she takes to the highways, where she meets Lee, who is driving a pair of swans to Ohio. The postal workers are on strike and everyone becomes their own mail carrier, crisscrossing the Midwest to deliver or retrieve what they would have otherwise dropped in the post: a baby gift, a pension check, a pair of chicks, a love letter.
When a gas station clerk asks Sibby and Lee to carry an urgent message to another city, they begin to tell each other stories, inventing drama and history for this mysterious pair. In doing so, they are drafting a happy queer love story even as their own begins. But road trips are never without detours, unexpected passengers, and mechanical failures. When Sibby and Lee meet a stranger at a motel, they find themselves drawn into a whole new set of adventures that complicate their mission and force them to confront their feelings and their choices. Are they scabs for delivering the letter? Can a draft card be canceled? If you step into another person’s shoes, are you walking backward in your own? And if these two lovebirds can’t figure out how to sing to each other more clearly, will they find their way?
Tender, funny, and insightful, Claire Luchette’s Swans is a story of self-invention, disarming connection, little-known history, winding roads, and rewriting the future.
Genre: Literary Fiction
It is March 1970. Sibby is on the run. Armed with a fold-up knife, a map, and a letter to the woman she loves from afar, she takes to the highways, where she meets Lee, who is driving a pair of swans to Ohio. The postal workers are on strike and everyone becomes their own mail carrier, crisscrossing the Midwest to deliver or retrieve what they would have otherwise dropped in the post: a baby gift, a pension check, a pair of chicks, a love letter.
When a gas station clerk asks Sibby and Lee to carry an urgent message to another city, they begin to tell each other stories, inventing drama and history for this mysterious pair. In doing so, they are drafting a happy queer love story even as their own begins. But road trips are never without detours, unexpected passengers, and mechanical failures. When Sibby and Lee meet a stranger at a motel, they find themselves drawn into a whole new set of adventures that complicate their mission and force them to confront their feelings and their choices. Are they scabs for delivering the letter? Can a draft card be canceled? If you step into another person’s shoes, are you walking backward in your own? And if these two lovebirds can’t figure out how to sing to each other more clearly, will they find their way?
Tender, funny, and insightful, Claire Luchette’s Swans is a story of self-invention, disarming connection, little-known history, winding roads, and rewriting the future.
Genre: Literary Fiction