Sailors Can't Swim is a squall of a novel: part bildungsroman, part maritime fairy tale, part history of an alternate eighteenth century. With gale-force vitality, it lays bare the meanness of meritocracy and the arbitrariness of citizenship in a world where every possession, or privilege, belonged to someone else first.

On the island of Ys, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, safety lies behind the city's high walls - where citizens live in opulent security while the shore dwellers below rebuild their ruined homes after each great equinoctial tide. Here Danaé Poussin is an orphan - and a swimmer, a gift both rare and suspect on Ys. She was born to the sea but yearns for a life within the walls. Flowing between shore, city, and open ocean, she navigates the rocky possibilities for women - from salter to thief to aristocrat to sailor's wife - in the calm before the revolution.