Swimming Sweet Arrow: A Novel

" Maureen Gibbon has written an amazing novel of hard lives and hard sex. Her Vangie Raybuck is a riveting original who goes all the way and then some -- and who is able to look the truth in the eye without blinking. SWIMMING SWEET ARROW is unflinching in its honesty and integrity. A wonderful debut!" -- --Paulette Bates Alden, author of Crossing the Moon" There. Now it is all written down. The broken, working-class families, the sex, drugs, dead-end lives and through it all the thing one really longs for: true decency. Luminous, simple, tough and written with stunning candor." -- --James Salter, author of A Sport and a Pastime"I read SWIMMING SWEET ARROW in one impassioned sitting. Maureen Gibbon has done something brave and intelligent -- and erotic." -- --Susanna Moore, author of In the Cut"SWIMMING SWEET ARROW is an almost crazily courageous knock-out of a first novel, beautiful in its risky honesty." -- --Elizabeth Tallent, author of Honey