The Chronology of Water

After losing her scholarship to drugs and alcohol, Lidia moves to Eugene and enrolls in the University of Oregon, where she is accepted by Ken Kesey to become one of 13 graduate students who collaboratively write the novel, Caverns, with him. Drugs and alcohol continue to flow along with bisexual promiscuity and the discovery of S&M helps ease Lidia’s demons. Ultimately Lidia’s career as a writer and teacher combined with the love of her husband and son replace the earlier chaos that was her life.

“In my belly, before he was born, Miles swam. Back and forth and around and flip turns and kicks and such movement, so alive, watching the taut skin of my belly was a little alarming. The force of him took my breath away. And yet we felt inseparable. His body was my body was his was mine. When I went swimming with Miles in my belly, which I did often, people in the lap lanes would marvel at how I could be so fast. So big—so round, so breasted—but fast. But I knew a secret that they did not. We are all swimmers before the dawn of oxygen and earth. We all carry the memory of that breathable blue past.”