NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An exhilarating novel about one American family and the dark moment that
shatters their suburban paradise from the New York Times bestselling author of Fleishman Is in
Trouble New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • New York Magazine’s Beach Read Book
Club Pick • Belletrist Book Club Pick • A Time and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year “Joins
the pantheon of great American novels.”— Los Angeles Times “Exuberant and absorbing . . . a
big old-fashioned social novel.”— The Atlantic “Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how
to start a fire?” In 1980 a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his
driveway brutalized and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week
later only slightly the worse and the family moves on with their lives resuming their prized
places in the saga of the American dream comforted in the realization that though their money
may have been what endangered them it is also what assured them their safety. But now nearly
forty years later it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything after all. Carl has
spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping while his
wife Ruth has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three
grown children aren’t doing much better: Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at
his law firm Beamer a Hollywood screenwriter will consume anything—substance foodstuff
women—in order to numb his own perpetual terror and Jenny has spent her life so bent on
proving that she’s not a product of her family’s pathology that she has come to define it. As
they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival they learn that the
family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing and they must face desperate questions about
how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives’ successes and failures. Long
Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history winding through decades and
generations all the way to the outrageous present and confronting the mainstays of American
Jewish life: tradition the pursuit of success the terror of history fear of the future old
wives’ tales evil eyes ambition achievement boredom dybbuks inheritance pyramid schemes
right-wing capitalists beta-blockers psychics and the mostly unspoken love and shared
experience that unite a family forever.
