Calgary author Samantha Warwick’s debut novel has all the right elements to be a swimming success. But, like its heroine, and most first fiction, it is an underdog. Released this past fall, Sage Island has faced hard knocks, including being trumped on its original title, Twenty-two Miles, by Cara Hedly’s 2007 release, Twenty Miles.

Twenty Miles celebrates women’s hockey; Sage Island (the title is clearly a compromise) is grounded in the less popular but far more intriguing sport of long distance, open-water swimming. It tells the story of 19-year-old Savanna Mason’s bid to win the Wrigley Ocean Marathon, a 35-kilometre winter swim from Catalina Island to Los Angeles. Described by some reviewers as a historical novel, set in the 1920s flapper era, this description, while factual, doesn’t really do it justice.

The Wrigley race is one of many endurance contests (held as pre-reality-show publicity stunts) that rose to popularity in the 1920s. Attracting a bizarre cast of competitors and onlookers from near and far, it was truly, as one character in the novel states, “one monkey short of a circus” — and perfect fodder for a writer who was previously a competitive swimmer and coach, who participated in long-distance open-water swim races. It offers Warwick an ideal platform from which to dive into her character’s coming-of-age story, which touches on the themes of women’s rights, class antagonism, nudity, prohibition and the Women’s Christian Temperence Union.

Warwick’s ocean marathon embraces a world of post-war misfits: one-armed coaches, itinerant veterans and legless swimmers like Charles Zimmy, a real-life figure Warwick places into the fictional hands of two Wrigley men at the start of the race, who “elevate [him] from his placement on the sand and toss him into the water.” Sage Island even polishes up a little-known pearl of Canadiana: One of Savanna Mason’s fellow competitors in the book is George Young, the 17-year-old Canadian who hitchhiked from Toronto and overcame incredible odds to become the real-life winner and only finisher of the 1927 marathon.

Warwick’s “Savi” is a lower-class anti-hero. She’s a gin-drinking, cigar-smoking, defiant but determined underdog whose repeated losses to a rival with a privileged background (the real-life Women’s Hall of Famer, Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle) drive her to make or break herself at the “gum-sponsored sea derby.”

Anticipation of the race keeps Warwick’s reader turning pages, lured also by the mystery of what has driven Savi to the island alone, an unaccompanied female surrounded by strange supporters and not altogether friendly competition. Between scenes capturing the flurry of marathon preparations on the island, Warwick’s character “splashes back” to preparations for another race — her quest to become the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Armed with her coach and a wealthy New York Greenback, Savi’s brush with society life, with its silk scarves, cream cloche lids, speeches, and kohl-lined eyes, is a stark contrast to “the underwater crash” of ocean she meets off Palos Verdes Point.

Warwick’s supporting characters are not as real as they could be beyond the roles they play in Savi’s mind. However, the author’s seamless use of historical detail and sensory language immerse the reader in Savi’s world, and Warwick’s climactic description of the race does not disappoint.

“The ice comes in splinters against my face, skin blooms gooseflesh, spreads over my body like dye.”

We feel, with Savi, the chafing of wool, the sting of salt, the insulation of axel grease, the balm of aloe and zinc oxide. Most of all, we feel her want, and finally, her release from “the wad” of disappointment and defeat that’s been balled up inside.

Sage Island is less about winning than it is about striving, and the unexpected rewards of perseverance — an encouraging lesson its author will hopefully take from her own writing.