In 1963, the author's parents drowned when the cruise ship Lakonia caught fire and sank north of the Canary Isles. Barrington was nineteen. Lifesaving is a lyrical rendering of an event that foreshadowed the accident, the years of holding grief at bay -- much of them in Franco's Spain, and her eventual passage through mourning. Lifesaving is also a coming-of-age story in its illumination of the special ways that teenagers deal with loss. The story is told with gentle humor and consummate skill.