Honoring Jewish Book Month – Four Selections

Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland, Simon & Schuster, ($25.99 hardcover), $16.99 paperback.

The character, about whom this first novel is based, was the author’s great-great aunt who grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Rachel Beanland lives with her husband and children in Richmond, Virginia

The novel begins in June 1934 and lasts through the summer, with a cast of Jewish family members plus a few others. 

In the 1930s, Atlantic City was the “Jewish Riviera” of the East Coast.  Joseph and Esther Adler own a bakery, where they raised daughter Fannie, 27, now married, with a daughter and pregnant; and Florence. Florence was a Wellesley college student who has been training to swim the English Channel. The family has taken in Anna, daughter of a friend of Joseph’s who has emigrated from Nazi Germany.; there is also the non-Jewish son of a hotel owner who works as a lifeguard. Each summer, the parents have rented out their house to vacationers and moved to the apartment above the bakery.

The focus of the novel revolves around the drowning of Florence. Rotating perspectives from character to character allows the author to show how much she is missed so they would come to love her and reveal their own rewards and challenges. In particular, we see the effect of Florence’s drowning which is played out as Mother Esther hides it from the sister Fannie because of  Fannie’s risky pregnancy. 

Rachel Beanland grew up hearing this family story. She says in an interview, “whenever my mother retold the story, the moral was obvious. If you loved someone…it was your prerogative and even your responsibility to shield them from information that might cause them pain.” As to the style, Beanland says, “my gut was that Florence’s story would be enhanced by looking at it through the prism of other people’s stories.”  It also gives the reader some of the lesser known aspects of American Jewish culture.

Anyone who remembers the Jewish connections to Atlantic City from their family or who enjoys reading family saga stories based on real life incidents will enjoy this special novel. The question one asks is how far will people go to protect their loved ones in the face of a tragedy?