Stotan!

Stotan: A cross between a Stoic and a Spartin

It's the last swimming season for Walker, Nortie, Lion, and Jeff, and their coach is building their self-discipline in a grueling four-hour-a-day test of stamina designed to bring them to the outer edge of their capabilities. As it turns out, Stotan Week is also the week in which secrets are revealed, and the four friends must draw upon their new strengths for an endurance they never knew they'd need. Camped out together in Lion's unheated apartment during winter vacation, the boys commit to Coach Max's punishing daily regimen. Plowing through relentless sets of butterfly, the four teammates discover reserves of grit that the water alone could never forge.

Yet their hardest battles wait outside the pool, where family violence and racist hostility threaten their small circle. Facing cruelty at home and clashes across town, Walker and his friends rely on their hard-won loyalty to hold the group together.

Can Walker, Lion, Nortie, and Jeff survive four hours a day in the pool when their lives outside are unraveling?

• Found Family: Without parents of his own, Lion Serbousek opens his quarters above the Fireside Tavern to his teammates, creating a haven where the boys share late-night talks and unwavering support.
• High School Athletics: As the only four members of Frost High's discontinued swim program, the boys routinely forfeit dual meets for lack of a diving squad while dominating every individual race on the schedule.
• Social Themes: When a white supremacist publication circulates through school lockers, the teammates take a public stand against hatred, refusing to let local bigots intimidate their friends.
• Coming of Age: Across a grueling winter in eastern Washington, Walker Dupree navigates turbulent romances, family fractures, and the harsh realization that adulthood rarely offers easy answers.
• Also by This Author: Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, Deadline and Whale Talk.