Swell: A Novel

Thirty years after From Rockaway ("A great first novel", Harper's Bazaar), Jill Eisenstadt returns with a darkly funny new work of fiction that exposes a city and a family at their most vulnerable.

When Sue Glassman's family needs a new home, Sue relents, after years of resisting, and agrees to convert to Judaism. In return, Sue's father-in-law, Sy, buys the family — Sue, Dan, and their two daughters — a capacious but ramshackle beachfront house in Rockaway, Queens, a world away from the Gl...