Swimming on Broken Ground is the story of Henry Nalbandian, the son of Armenian immigrants, payroll clerk at the Kern River oil field, and Ruthie Brown, a young African American cleaning woman at the county hospital. They meet on the night of the 1952 Bakersfield earthquake, the third most powerful earthquake in California recorded history. Together they face the disapproval of society against interracial relationships and the violent designs of two men, one a roughneck from the oil fields, and the other a pimp from the African American shanty community of Cottonwood. They embark on a journey into the Sierra Nevada, where they encounter history, both natural and human, and each other. Their story unfolds in a series of forty-one poems.