The Lifeguard combines Mary Morris's consummate craft as a storyteller with her gift for dramatic travel writing. In the title story, a teenage lifeguard sees his mystique among the girls on the beach dissolve in a panicked moment when he cannot save a child. In The Glass-Bottom Boat, a mother on her first trip abroad learns about trust from a solicitous stranger.

The Lifeguard is a powerful collection of ten short stories that shows Morris's great sensitivity to men and women at moments of turbulence, uncertainty, and crisis.