Conversation with a Bookseller: ‘Lost in Summerland’ by Barrett Swanson

In late February of 2020, Barrett Swanson volunteered as a victim at Disaster City, a sprawling training facility for first responders. The coronavirus had not yet reached pandemic proportions, and it quickly exceeded some of our worst-case scenarios by the time his essay was published in Harper’s in June. Only a few months into the uncertain timeline of the pandemic…