Here's what they never tell you about being a girl…

Close friends since the days when they used to cut school and go swimming in Sweet Arrow Lake, Vangie Raybuck and June Keel are high school seniors out to have fun. That means dope, booze, and fooling around with their boyfriends, Del and Ray--sometimes in the same car at the same time. They work together at Noecker's chicken farm after school, compare notes on birth control pills, and make a nightly ritual out of smoking and talking. They tell each other everything: "That was the kind of friends we were."

But after they graduate, things begin to shift in ways neither would have imagined. Vangie gets a job waitressing, hems up her skirts for better tips, and moves in with Del; June hires on at the local factory and moves in with Ray and his older brother, Luke, in nearby Church's Mountain. As the two friends become more involved in their lives with their men, they see less of each other. Yet it soon becomes clear to Vangie that something is different, that June has crossed a dangerous line. And after Del overdoses and goes into rehab, Vangie begins to wonder how any of them will survive the lives they've chosen.

Written in prose as clear and well wrought as it is shockingly explicit, Swimming Sweet Arrow is a tale of friendship, passion, and survival from a remarkable new writer.