As Willa Cather simply states in her novel, “Where there is great love, there are always miracles.”
The Lifeguard begins at the end─ with a miracle.
Late Christmas Eve, a disillusioned Rita Wishwood returns home to an empty house. Life has betrayed her. Grief fuels a festering rage and overwhelmed, Rita lashes out, wheeling the contents of the counter across the kitchen. Suddenly her world freezes, locking Rita in a stark timeless landscape. Her life is paused.
Yet how? And why?
The answers lie in Rita's recent past.
Three weeks before Christmas Rita's ex-husband, Neville Wishwood wakes from a discomforting dream. On his drive to work, a distracted Neville accidently hits a pedestrian. The accident incites amnesia in the man, triggering Neville's sense of responsibility. He takes in this seemingly hapless stranger who settles into the Wishwood home joining Neville's Alzheimer's afflicted father, Neville's young son, Dewey and Dell, Neville's best friend. Together they form an odd alliance and go about their daily lives with baffling, often mystifying results.
As Neville juggles his life issues: job disappointments, an office nemesis, an unwanted divorce and his ill father, it soon becomes evident the amnesiac is no ordinary man and his sudden entry into Neville's life, no accident. But who is he? In searching for answers, Neville unravels the stranger's secret and with it, the miraculous potential of love.
