Swimming Upstream: A Novel

by Jacob Anderson-Minshall

Swimming Upstream tells the story of complexly interwoven genealogies of family, tradition, war and nature shrouded in decades of secrecy, lies and betrayal until a private investigator shows up on Flint Douglas’s doorstep one day looking for Flint’s father Ki to donate a kidney to save a sister Flint never knew existed. But Brooke Redfish is only one secret of Ki’s past discovered by Flint that sends him reeling down a rabbit hole of unraveling mysteries and explosive secrets about his family and identity. As Flint uncovers the truth, his once dependable borders of gender, geography and kinship dissolve into the unpredictable and arbitrary waters of fate, free will and consequence to which he must adapt like a shape-shifting salmon or risk drowning in a lineage of trauma.

382 pages, Paperback

Published May 7, 2018

About the author

As a park ranger, Jacob Anderson-Minshall completed the National Park Service's law enforcement Ranger Academy and patrolled forested lands above Silicon Valley, bay and ocean-side parks and rolling hills north of San Francisco. When a disabling injury ended his ranger career, Jacob returned to his first love—writing. He co-founded Girlfriends magazine and served as the publication's first director of circulation. Now the transgender writer's weekly syndicated column, TransNation runs in LGBT publications from San Francisco to Boston; and he is a frequent contributor to the feminist publication, Bitch. Jacob's interest in criminal investigation was amplified by the 2000 murder of his brother-in-law, Tom Sherwood in Pocatello, Idaho. To date, that case remains unsolved.