Florence Adler Swims Forever

Last updated
Florence Adler Swims Forever
Florence Adler Swims Forever (Rachel Beanland).png
Cover of first edition
AuthorRachel Beanland
Audio read byRachel Beanland
Jonathan Davis
Tim Paige
Carly Robins
Jonathan Todd Ross
Tara Sands
Jesse Vilinsky
Gabra Zackman
Cover artistLisa Golightly (illustration)
Jackie Seow (design)
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Set in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1934
Publisher Simon & Schuster
Publication date
July 7, 2020
Media typePrint (hardback), ebook, audiobook
Pages320 pages
ISBN 978-1-982132-46-0 First edition hardback
OCLC 1124282271
813/.6
LC Class PS3602.E2474 F56 2020

Florence Adler Swims Forever is the debut novel of American author Rachel Beanland. It was first published in the United States on July 7, 2020, through Simon & Schuster and centers upon a family living in Atlantic City during the 1930s. [1]

Contents

Synopsis

Esther and Joseph Adler own a bakery, above which is an apartment they lived in while they raised their two daughters. While they now have a house, they still return to the apartment each summer so they can make extra money by renting out their home to vacationers eager to visit Atlantic City. The apartment grows cramped after their daughters, college girl Florence and expectant mother Fannie, return home. Florence is preparing to swim the English Channel, a dangerous venture that requires that she spend the summer training, and Fannie must remain on bed rest lest she run the risk of miscarriage. Joseph has also brought home a young Jewish woman that he helped emigrate from Nazi Germany, which makes the apartment even more crowded. After Florence dies during a swimming accident Esther convinces the family to hide the truth from Fannie out of fear that she would lose the baby. This proves to be a difficult venture and one that brings out much family tension and many secrets.

Development

Beanland began writing the novel during a novel writing workshop at Virginia Commonwealth University during 2016; she would later use the first six chapters of the novel for her Master of Fine Arts thesis. [2] [3]

The book's central premise, that a mother would hide the death of a child from their sibling, was derived from the story of her great-aunt Florence Lowenthal's death. Florence died from drowning and while the youngest sibling had known about the death as soon as it happened, the eldest sibling (Beanland's grandmother) was not told because she was in the hospital. Beanland stated that her mother emphasized "what a strong woman Florence’s mother must have been" and as such, that she had been doing the right thing. Beanland wondered "What if Florence’s sister — my great-grandmother — had wanted to know her sister had died." [4] She was initially nervous to have her mother and grandmother read the story; her grandmother died before the novel was completed but had stated that she was fine with the novel's premise. Beanland's mother read one of the novel's drafts and while she initially had some trouble separating some of the characters from their real life counterparts, "two-thirds of the way through she was able to let go of the real people and embrace the characters. When she finished the book she called me in tears and said it was lovely." [4]

The professor teaching the workshop, Tom De Haven, introduced Beanland to an agent with Janklow & Nesbit Associates. After several drafts were completed, the agent shopped the final draft to several publishing houses. They eventually chose to sell the book to Simon & Schuster in January 2019. [2]

Publication

Florence Adler Swims Forever was first published in hardback and ebook format on July 7, 2020, through Simon & Schuster. [5] An audiobook adaptation was released through Simon & Schuster Audio and is narrated by the ensemble cast of Jonathan Davis, Tim Paige, Carly Robins, Jonathan Todd Ross, Tara Sands, Jesse Vilinsky, Gabra Zackman, and the author, Rachel Beanland. [6]

Reception

Critical reception was largely positive and common elements of praise centered around the book's handling of tragedy and family drama. [7] [8] [9] A reviewer for the Jewish Book Council praised the accuracy of Beanland's depiction of a Jew trying to flee pre-war Germany and for being one of "not many stories depicting Jewish immigrants already living for a generation in America in 1934". [10] The New York Times's Allegra Goodman noted that while the book had some limitations, "Beanland’s novel draws the reader in. The situation she describes is poignant and the characters she develops win us over with their private grief." [11]

Related Research Articles

<i>Are You There God? Its Me, Margaret.</i> 1970 novel by Judy Blume

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. is a middle-grade novel by American writer Judy Blume, published in 1970. Its protagonist, Margaret Simon, is a sixth-grader who grows up without a religious affiliation because of her parents' interfaith marriage. This contemporary realistic novel was popular with middle-grade readers in the 1970s for its relatable portrayal of a young girl confronting early-adolescent anxieties, such as menstruation, brassieres and boys. The recipient of national honors and book awards, the novel has been challenged for its frank discussion of sexual and religious topics.

Edith Konecky was a Jewish American feminist novelist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paula Fox</span> American author

Paula Fox was an American author of novels for adults and children and of two memoirs. For her contributions as a children's writer she won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1978, the highest international recognition for a creator of children's books. She also won several awards for particular children's books including the 1974 Newbery Medal for her novel The Slave Dancer; a 1983 National Book Award in category Children's Fiction (paperback) for A Place Apart; and the 2008 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for A Portrait of Ivan (1969) in its German-language edition Ein Bild von Ivan.

Jennifer Weiner is an American writer, television producer, and journalist. She is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her debut novel, published in 2001, was Good in Bed. Her novel In Her Shoes (2002) was made into a movie starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette, and Shirley MacLaine.

<i>Shes Come Undone</i> 1992 novel by Wally Lamb

She's Come Undone is the 1992 debut novel by Wally Lamb. The novel was selected as the fourth book for Oprah's Book Club in December 1996. Lamb's novel was named a finalist for the 1992 Los Angeles Book Awards' Art Seidenbaum Prize for first fiction. She's Come Undone has been translated into eighteen languages.

Rachel Adler is Professor Emerita of Modern Jewish Thought and Judaism and Gender at Hebrew Union College, at the Los Angeles campus.

Lisa Grunwald Adler is an American author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Kushner</span> American writer

Rachel Kushner is an American writer, known for her novels Telex from Cuba (2008), The Flamethrowers (2013), and The Mars Room (2018).

Micol Ostow is an American author, editor and educator who has written more than 40 published works. Her first original hardcover novel, Emily Goldberg Learns to Salsa, was named a "New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age". She has also been the ghostwriter for novelizations of television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed and Fearless.

Allegra Huston is a British-American author, editor, and writer based in Taos, New Mexico.

Helie Lee is a Korean American writer and university lecturer who has also made a documentary film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Cohn</span> American writer

Rachel Cohn is an American young adult fiction writer. Her first book, Gingerbread, was published in 2002. Since then she has gone on to write many other successful YA and younger children's books, and has collaborated on six books with the author David Levithan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesmyn Ward</span> American writer

Jesmyn Ward is an American novelist and a professor of English at Tulane University, where she holds the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities. She won the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction for her second novel Salvage the Bones and won the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction for her novel Sing, Unburied, Sing. She also received a 2012 Alex Award for the story about familial love and community in facing Hurricane Katrina. She is the only woman and only African American to win the National Book Award for Fiction twice. All of Ward's first three novels are set in the fictitious Mississippi town of Bois Sauvage. In her fourth novel, Let Us Descend, the main character Annis, perhaps inhabits an earlier Bois Sauvage when she is taken shackled from the Carolina coast and put to work on a Mississippi sugar plantation near New Orleans.

<i>Sarahs Key</i> (novel) French novel

Sarah's Key is a historical fiction novel by Franco-British author Tatiana de Rosnay, first published in French as Elle s'appelait Sarah in September 2006. Two main parallel plots are followed through the book. The first is that of ten-year-old Sarah Starzynski, a Jewish girl born in Paris, who is arrested with her parents during the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup. Before they go, she locks her four-year-old brother in a cupboard, thinking the family should be back in a few hours. The second plot follows Julia Jarmond, an American journalist living in Paris, who is asked to write an article in honour of the 60th anniversary of the roundup.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shani Boianjiu</span> Israeli author

Shani Boianjiu is an Israeli author. Her debut novel, The People of Forever Are Not Afraid, was released in 2012, and has been published in 23 countries. In 2011 the National Book Foundation named her a 5 under 35 honoree.

Beanland is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jenny Han</span> American writer (born 1980)

Jenny Han is an American author, screenwriter, executive producer, and showrunner. She is best known for writing the The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy, which she adapted into a TV series for Prime Video. She also wrote the To All the Boys trilogy which was adapted into a Netflix film series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Taddeo</span> American author and journalist

Lisa Taddeo is an American author and journalist known for her book Three Women. Taddeo's work has appeared in The Best American Political Writing and The Best American Sports Writing anthologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Eliza Griffiths</span> American poet, photographer and visual artist (born 1978)

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is an American poet, novelist, photographer and visual artist, who is the author of five published collections of poems. In Seeing the Body (2020), she "pairs poetry with photography, exploring memory, Black womanhood, the American landscape, and rebirth." It was a nominee for the 2021 NAACP Image Award in Poetry.

Rachel Beanland is an American novelist.

References

  1. ↑ "Author Rachel Beanland celebrates the release of 'Florence Adler Swims Forever'". WTVR. 2020-07-06. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  2. 1 2 "Alumna's acclaimed debut novel began as an idea in a VCU writing workshop". VCU. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  3. ↑ Beanland, Rachel (2020-01-01). Florence Adler Swims Forever: A Novel (MFA thesis). Virginia Commonwealth University.
  4. 1 2 "Q&A with author Rachel Beanland". University of South Carolina. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  5. ↑ Beanland, Rachel (2020-07-07). Florence Adler Swims Forever. ISBN   978-1-9821-3246-0.
  6. ↑ Beanland, Rachel; Ross, Jonathan Todd; Sands, Tara; Davis, Jonathan; Zackman, Gabra; Robins, Carly; Paige, Tim; Vilinsky, Jesse (2020). Florence Adler swims forever. ISBN   978-1-7971-0705-9. OCLC   1163926283.
  7. ↑ McCraw Crow, Sarah (July 2020). "Book Review - Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland". BookPage.com. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  8. ↑ Riggleson, Ashley (July 12, 2020). "Book review: Author explores class and faith with warmth, lightness in 'Florence Adler Swims Forever'". The Free Lance Star. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  9. ↑ Hines, Morgan. "'Florence Adler Swims Forever' review: A family seized by loss in a perfect summer read". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  10. ↑ Sturm Nagel, Na’amit (July 27, 2000). "Florence Adler Swims Forever". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  11. ↑ Goodman, Allegra (2020-07-07). "A Sudden Tragedy Leads to Unsinkable Family Secrets". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2020-08-21.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.