Barbara J. Zitwer

The J.M. Barrie Ladies’ Swimming Society

Short Books/UK, 2012. American publication winter 2013 by Marble Arch Press/Simon and Schuster. Sold to Xander Uitgevers/Holland, world Spanish/Planeta, City Editions/France, Azbooka-Atticus/Russia, Allen & Unwin/Australia and New Zealand, Znak/Poland.
Film rights sold to Ealing Studios.

A warm-hearted, funny women’s novel that explores the hearts and minds of its female characters from the ages of fifteen to eighty-five. A book about the secret lives of women. Joey Rubin is a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker with a working girl's dream of a job and not much else. She is single, a workaholic and the only intimate relationship in her life is with her dog. She is sent to the English countryside to help renovate a stately ancient manor house where JM Barrie wrote Peter Pan. Her plan to turn the estate into an exclusive spa/resort, is challenged by the people who live in this real “never-neverland.” She is confronted with a cast of characters that could have jumped out of the pages of Peter Pan: a band of Lost Girls, who are 80, instead of 8! They seem to have never grown up and these octogenarians who are more like teenagers, dare Joey to come swim with them in their outdoor pond. She can’t resist!

She loses all abandon once she dives into the pond and thus begins an everlasting friendship the most unlikely group of women and a journey where she finds true love.

Als das Meer uns Gehörte / When the Sea belonged to Us

After the death of her husband, Tess Harding finds refuge with Robbie, her deaf son, in Montauk, a village on Long Island. Despite all her efforts, she does not manage to help her child manage the loss. Robbie blames her father's death, so Tess is afraid to lose him. Then they meet a marine biologist: Kip is in search of a whale with a singing singing. Robbie is fascinated by the animal and finds a way to track it in the sea. The encounter with the whale helps him overcome his isolation - and Tess has the first hope of a new beginning. A deaf boy, a woman who has lost her husband, a marine explorer - and a blue whale guiding her on a journey across the ocean.

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