'The world has a thousand ways of reducing us. Some loud, some gentle. Some dressed as love, some as duty. Sometimes it can feel easier to shrink. To accept the version of you being offered. To believe this is the size of you now.

But it isn’t.

When life narrowed, I refused to shrink. I set off. And I swam'

We are all looking for a way to live that feels true. For Kate Rew, swimming outdoors, beneath the sky and through the elements, is that way: it’s a cannon of joy in a complicated world where, when life closes in, it’s all too easy to lose sight of the horizon.

Kate does not swim to make herself better - ‘life is not an illness and nature is not there for our therapy’- but because swimming is a way of letting meaning sneak back in through the body.

Blending memoir, adventure and nature writing she swims with friends, family and people she meets along the way: up a cold Welsh estuary where the tide surges under low autumn skies; down 24 kilometres of peat-dark river from the Arctic Circle where reindeer watch from the banks; through muddy rivers and ditches close to her Somerset home and into Guernsey sea gullies where clear waves tower above her.

Surfacing is a life-affirming story of connection, with people, places and the parts of ourselves that can disappear. Taking us on an exhilarating, heart-opening journey through rivers, seas and reservoirs both close to home and further afield, it’s a book for anyone who has ever felt hemmed in, and who wants to lift their eyes to the horizon and keep striking out for more.

It’s about not being afraid of what’s around the next bend.

© Kate Rew 2027 (P) Penguin Audio 2027