From the critically acclaimed writer of A Different Sun, a Southern coming-of-age novel that sets three very different young people against the tumultuous years of the American civil rights movement…Tacker Hart left his home in North Carolina as a local high school football hero, but returns in disgrace after being fired from a prestigious architectural assignment in West Africa. Yet the … West Africa. Yet the culture and people he grew to admire have left their mark on him. Adrift, he manages his father’s grocery store and becomes reacquainted with a girl he barely knew growing up.
Kate Monroe’s parents have died, leaving her the family home and the right connections in her Southern town. But a trove of disturbing letters sends her searching for the truth behind the comfortable life she’s been bequeathed.
On the same morning but at different moments, Tacker and Kate encounter a young African-American, Gaines Townson, and their stories converge with his. As Winston-Salem is pulled into the tumultuous 1960s, these three Americans find themselves at the center of the civil rights struggle, coming to terms with the legacies of their pasts as they search for an ennobling future.
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SWIMMING BETWEEN WORLDS is a beautiful, evocative love story set against the backdrop of colonial Nigeria and the civil rights movement in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the late fifties. The writing is rich, the characters are unforgettable, and the descriptions of West Africa are spelling-binding. (The author was raised there—as the daughter of American missionaries.)
The novel tells the story of Tacker Hart, a gentle, white All-American hero, who follows his heart into architecture. After being chosen for a prestigious assignment to help build local schools in Nigeria, he leaves for two years abroad. But he never completes the program. Smitten with the culture, he embraces a new world. A Black world. His sponsors, appalled that he’s ‘gone native’, send him home in disgrace.
The year is 1959, and Tacker no longer feels as if he belongs in the Jim Crow South. Crawling out from depression, he offers to manage a supermarket owned by his father, while figuring out a path back to architecture.
Managing the store changes his life in unexpected ways. There he crosses paths with Kate, a young white woman, and Gaines, a young African-American man.
Tacker barely remembers Kate from high school, but she remembers him—the football star. She also returned home recently, and is drifting through grief after losing both parents. She has a future as a wife—with her medical student boyfriend—but it’s Tacker who calls to her, along with her lost dream of becoming a photographer.
Meanwhile, Tacker hires Gaines to stock shelves, unaware that he’s active in the civil rights movement.
As friendships bloom between the three characters, Tacker is drawn into the world of sit-ins, but Kate is terrified that the man she’s in love with is mixing with radicals. Tension erupts when Tacker is given the opportunity to design a bath house for the new public swimming pool. His design could be his ticket into the local, elite world of architects, but the pool will be segregated. Does he follow his career or his desire to make the world a better place?
What happens next creates a compelling page-turner.
This is an important and timely book as well as a really good story. Highly recommend.
Wonderful story…and timely!
Love story was so predictable, and characters lacked nuance. Read like a young adult novel. The ending did contain a surprise so that redeemed the book somewhat.
Over all I was disappointed.
very good story, slow in some parts, but worth staying on until finish. Folks who grew up in the pre 60’s south seemed acclimated to separation of races. The main character grew as the story developed. And his experience in Nigeria did more for his learning that just the architectural work experience. It was enlightening and heartwarming to see how small changes (like being able to eat at the Woolworths lunch counter) had to be tackled to show inequalities. A good eye opening book on civil rights, social stigma and just plain old ignorance.
Great, original narrative with well developed characters