Swans | claireluchette

SWANS

a novel

Synopsis

A tender, exuberant tale of hitchhiking, lonely hearts, and queer dreaming, set during the great postal workers’ strike of 1970, Swans is the captivating second novel by the award-winning author of Agatha of Little Neon.

It is March 1970, and the postal workers are on strike. Armed with a fold-up knife, a sock full of nickels, and a letter to the woman she loves, Sibby is on the run. An avid lonely-hearts correspondent, she escapes a conversion camp and hitches north, making her way through the kindness of strangers. Then she meets Lee, who is driving a pair of swans to Ohio: with the mail stopped, everyone has to be their own mail carrier, criss-crossing the Midwest to deliver or retrieve what they would have otherwise dropped in the post—a baby gift, a pension check, a crate of baby chicks, a love letter. When a gas station clerk asks Sibby and Lee to take an important message to a woman in another county, they begin to tell each other stories about the correspondents, crafting a happy queer love story, even as their own begins. But road trips are never without detours, unexpected passengers, and mechanical failures. Sibby and Lee meet a stranger at a motel who needs a ride north, and they find themselves drawn into a whole new set of adventures that complicate their mission and force them to confront their feelings and choices. Are they scabs for delivering the letter? Can a draft card be canceled? How do we know if a story is ours to tell? And if an identity is made up, is it not real?

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.

Advanced Praise

"Swans is a sneaky metamorphosis novel with an unforgettable protagonist; a wild, daring, impossible-to-predict journey. The brilliant Claire Luchette brings dignity and heart to everyone Sibby meets on the road. I can't imagine a reader who won't want to ride with her forever. Claire Luchette is one of my favorite stylists and I can't wait for Swans to take over the world."

—Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Beautyland

“Swans is one of the wittiest, wisest, most alive books I’ve read in forever. At first I thought the engine of this novel was Luchette’s contagious love for their outsider characters—queer weirdos and horny wildlife and lonely Midwesterners of all stripes—but then I realized it was actually their ear for words themselves: for what makes a phrase or image keep vibrating inside us like the clapper of a bell. If you’ve always secretly wondered what it would be like if Joy Williams live-tweeted a gay road trip or Marilynne Robinson wrote a slapstick comedy or Toni Morrison took up the question of gender dysphoria, look no further. Swans is utterly next-level, and I never wanted it to end.”

—Maggie Millner, author of Couplets

"Swans is a wild, inventive, hilarious, and slyly philosophical ride of a road-trip novel. Who but Claire Luchette would think to set a comic tale in the rural midwest during the postal strike of 1970? Or give us a seventeen-year-old runaway set on meeting her Lonely Hearts correspondent IRL? Or Lee, the woman who offers a ride in a car also occupied by two large swans headed for a photo shoot? Luchette is in a line with Mark Twain and Charles Portis, great humor writers with a feel for the details of Americana. There are delights on every page."

—Alice Elliot Dark, author of Fellowship Point