Swimming Upstream tells the story of complexly interwoven genealogies of family, tradition, war and nature shrouded in decades of secrecy, lies and betrayal until a private investigator shows up on Flint Douglas's doorstep one day looking for Flint's father Ki to donate a kidney to save a sister Flint never knew existed. But Brooke Redfish is only one secret of Ki's past discovered by Flint that sends him reeling down a rabbit hole of unraveling mysteries and explosive secrets about his family and identity. As Flint uncovers the truth, his once dependable borders of gender, geography and kinship dissolve into the unpredictable and arbitrary waters of fate, free will and consequence, to which he must adapt like a shape-shifting salmon or risk drowning in a lineage of trauma.