Swim Home to the Vanished
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Shaun Taylor-Corbett
About this listen
Shortlisted for the Reading the West Book Award in the Debut Fiction
“Swim Home to the Vanished is a lush and fantastic journey through strange lands and minds from an incandescent new voice full of my kind of melancholic brilliance and unromantic magic.”—Tommy Orange, author of There, There
After the death of his brother, a grief-stricken young man seeks refuge and oblivion in a secluded fishing village dominated by a family of brujas in this haunting debut novel, inspired, in part, by the ramifications of Diné history and thought—a mesmerizing, original tale in the tradition of works by Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, and Gabriel García Márquez.
When the river swallowed Kai, Damien’s little brother didn’t die so much as vanish. As the unbearable loss settles deeper into his bones, Damien, a small-town line cook, walks away from everything he has ever known. Driving as far south as his old truck and his legs allow, he lands in a fishing village beyond the reach of his past where he hopes he can finally forget.
But the village has grief of its own. The same day that Damien arrives, a young woman from the community’s most powerful family is being laid to rest. A stranger in town, Damien is the object of gossip and suspicion, ignored by all except the dead girl’s mother, Ana Maria, who offers Damien a room and a job.
Grateful for her kindness, Damien soon begins to fall under Ana Maria's charismatic spell. But how long can he resist the rumors swirling through town suggesting she might have had something to do with her daughter’s death? Or deny his strange kinship with one of Ana Maria's surviving daughters, Marta, who knows too well the grief that follows the loss of a sibling—and who is driven by a fierce need for revenge? Swiftly, Damien finds himself caught in a power struggle between the brujas, a whirlwind battle that threatens to sweep the whole village out to sea.
Resonant with the Diné creation story and the unshakeable weight of the Long Walk—the forced removal of the Navajo from their land—Swim Home to the Vanished explores the human capacity for grief and redemption, and the lasting effects it has on the soul.
©2023 Brendan Shay Basham (P)2023 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.
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Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
- By Kathleen on 03-22-12
By: Lauren Groff
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The Past Is Never
- A Novel
- By: Tiffany Quay Tyson
- Narrated by: Devon Sorvari
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Siblings Bert, Willet, and Pansy know better than to go swimming at the old rock quarry. According to their father, it's the Devil's place, a place that's been cursed and forgotten. But Mississippi Delta summer days are scorching hot, and they can't resist cooling off in the dark, bottomless water - until the day six-year-old Pansy vanishes...not drowned, not lost, simply gone. When their father disappears as well, Bert and Willet leave their childhoods behind to try and hold their broken family together.
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Intriguing Southern gothic tale
- By Robert Jason on 03-11-20
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Vampires in the Lemon Grove
- Stories
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey, Joy Osmanski, Kaleo Griffith, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In the collection's marvelous title story, two aging vampires in a sun-drenched Italian lemon grove find their hundred-year marriage tested when one of them develops a fear of flying. In "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979", a dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left in a seagull's nest. "Proving Up" and "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" find Russell veering into more sinister territory.
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Stylish modern magic realism
- By Ryan on 04-10-13
By: Karen Russell
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Sula
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.
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Good against evil and a riotous story to boot
- By Karen on 04-11-11
By: Toni Morrison
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The Paper Palace
- A Novel
- By: Miranda Cowley Heller
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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It is a perfect July morning, and Elle, a 50-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at “The Paper Palace” - the family summer place she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: Last night, Elle and her oldest friend, Jonas, crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love.
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The story has too much child abuse discription
- By DTurek on 07-14-21
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The Promise
- By: Ann Weisgarber
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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1900. Young pianist Catherine Wainwright flees the fashionable town of Dayton, Ohio in the wake of a terrible scandal. Heartbroken and facing destitution, she finds herself striking up correspondence with a childhood admirer, the recently widowed Oscar Williams. In desperation she agrees to marry him, but when Catherine travels to Oscar's farm on Galveston Island, Texas—a thousand miles from home—she finds she is little prepared for the life that awaits her.
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Beautifully written and read
- By RueRue on 04-21-14
By: Ann Weisgarber
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Elmet
- By: Fiona Mozley
- Narrated by: Gareth Bennett Ryan
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In this atmospheric and profoundly moving debut, Cathy and Daniel live with their father, John, in the remote woods of Yorkshire, in a house the three of them built themselves. John is a gentle brute of a man, a former enforcer who fights for money when he has to, but who otherwise just wants to be left alone to raise his children. When a local landowner shows up on their doorstep, their precarious existence is threatened, and a series of actions is set in motion that can only end in violence.
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Strains credibility
- By DM on 01-06-18
By: Fiona Mozley
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Ceremony
- By: Leslie Marmon Silko
- Narrated by: Pete Bradbury
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Leslie Marmon Silko's sublime Ceremony is almost universally considered one of the finest novels ever written by an American Indian. It is the poetic, dreamlike tale of Tayo, a mixed-blood Laguna Pueblo and veteran of World War II. Tormented by shell shock and haunted by memories of his cousin who died in the war, Tayo struggles on his impoverished reservation. After turning to alcohol to ease his pain, he strives for a better understanding of who he is.
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Worth a re-read
- By Mariah on 02-02-09
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The Winemaker's Daughter
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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When Brunella Cartolano visits her father on the family vineyard in the basin of the Cascade Mountains, she's shocked by the devastation caused by a four-year drought. Passionate about the Pacific Northwest ecology, Brunella, a cultural impact analyst, is embroiled in a battle to save the Seattle waterfront from redevelopment and to preserve a fisherman's livelihood. But when a tragedy among fire-jumpers results from a failure of the water supply - her brother Niccolo is among those lost - Brunella finds herself with another mission.
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Obviously Not Read By A Washington Resident
- By John C Schuyler on 04-24-19
By: Timothy Egan
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Island of a Thousand Mirrors
- By: Nayomi Munaweera
- Narrated by: Priya Ayyar
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Yasodhara tells the story of her own Sinhala family, rich in love, with everything they could ask for. As a child in idyllic Colombo, social hierarchies, their parents’ ambitions, teenage love shape Yasodhara and her siblings’ lives, and, subtly, the differences between Tamil and Sinhala people; but the peace is shattered by the tragedies of war. Yasodhara's family escapes to Los Angeles. But Yasodhara's life has already become intertwined with a young Tamil girl's.
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Pronunciation
- By Mahidevran on 04-07-18
By: Nayomi Munaweera
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The Last House on Needless Street
- By: Catriona Ward
- Narrated by: Christopher Ragland
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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In a boarded-up house on a dead-end street at the edge of the wild Washington woods lives a family of three. A teenage girl who isn’t allowed outside, not after last time. A man who drinks alone in front of his TV, trying to ignore the gaps in his memory. And a house cat who loves napping and reading the Bible. An unspeakable secret binds them together, but when a new neighbor moves in next door, what is buried out among the birch trees may come back to haunt them all.
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I can only listen in 1-2 hour segments!
- By Brenda on 10-04-21
By: Catriona Ward
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Thieving Forest
- By: Martha Conway
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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On a humid day in June 1806, on the edge of Ohio's Great Black Swamp, 17-year-old Susanna Quiner watches from behind a maple tree as a band of Potawatomi Indians kidnaps her four older sisters from their cabin. With both her parents dead and all the other settlers out in their fields, Susanna makes the rash decision to pursue them herself. What follows is a young woman's quest to find her sisters and the parallel story of her sisters' new lives.
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Skip the audiobook, read the real thing.
- By Kelly on 11-26-15
By: Martha Conway
What listeners say about Swim Home to the Vanished
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kit
- 03-10-24
Confusing and kind of gross
While I appreciate that this story was very different, I didn’t understand the references to obscure lore. At one point I was eating while listening and had to pause the book because many of the descriptions were gross.
That being said, it’s cool that books like this are made and published. Some folks clearly appreciated it. Maybe I would have been amazed if I had the context to understand it. An authors preface may have helped.
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- Jason
- 01-27-24
No idea what was even happening - too artsy
So Damien is saddened by death and likens himself to a fish. Does he go to purgatory and all this stuff is not on earth? I had no idea what was going on. Seems like he is reincarnated as a fish, what did I just listen to?
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1 person found this helpful
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- HSTJ
- 01-20-24
A rambling
A rambling of nothingness that seems to go nowhere. The narrator does a good job but to me the story has no substance.
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- Chuck
- 03-25-24
This is one weird tale!
this should be labeled as a fantasy. it is not taking place in the real world.
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- Debbie
- 01-27-24
Weird but intriguing
Almost quit this story a couple of times. It was a story about a man dealing with his brother’s death. Was this all a dream? I still don’t know! HA! Very well narrated and that compelled me to keep listening.
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- alex k hirsch
- 09-17-23
Listen
If you’ve ever known there are more worlds than our limited perceptions hint, then the story of these fish navigating drying worlds is for you <3
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24 people found this helpful
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- Rina
- 02-06-24
Time wasted
I listened halfway before tapping out as I couldn't take another moment of this nonsense. I listen to well over 250 audiobooks a year and it's rare that I dislike something to this degree. It was as if the author was on an acid trip during a fever dream... at no point did the story come together or the characters grab my interest. Really glad it was only $1.99 yet I still feel like a waste of money and time.
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- Remy
- 04-29-24
Could not get into this
This story is just to weird to keep my attention. I listened to a third of the book, realized I had no idea what the story was about or what I had just listened to. Gave up.
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- Jake Gunnoe
- 12-19-23
The Poetry of Grief
Incredibly well-written. The prose is poetic from start to finish!
It's not for everyone. The story moves rather slowly and the language is often very figurative. The symbolism is rich and the ending is beautiful if you stick with it.
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28 people found this helpful
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- Hipsygirl
- 02-01-24
How Nature Mourns with One's Grief
This is a story that takes the reader on a journey on how to accept one's grief and how a person changes from it. A mixture of Diné and Mexican culture, this story follows a young man as he is literally changed by his brother's death, the last of his family. With representations of both shamanism and brujería in the mix, this story leads down a path of how one may deal with death, grief, and acceptance.
Great story, ties well to the Southwest culture.
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