"The book is made up of a novella and five short stories; the phrase 'Swim Back to Me' is the title of a song mentioned in one of the stories, 'Molten,' in which a mother grieves the loss of her teenage son by listening to his music. I wanted to avoid naming the book after one of the individual pieces; I wanted something that worked thematically for the entire book. What made the phrase 'Swim Back to Me' so powerful was the combination of darkness and light that it contained: the addressee is gone but is capable of returning."
