Will Byrnes's Reviews > Florence Adler Swims Forever

Florence was not on that boat, would never arrive in France. He would not find her on the shores of the English Channel or at the Hygeia [pool] or even on the beaches of Atlantic City. He looked over at Stuart, who was openly weeping as he watched the boat disappear from view. Maybe Joseph’s daughter was to be found in the people who loved her.

Florence Adler was a strong young woman with a dream. A successful competitive swimmer, she wanted to take on the challenge of swimming the English Channel. “Trudy Ederle did it in a little over fourteen hours. I’m hoping to do it in under twelve.” While training for that feat in the ocean off Atlantic City, Florence, inexplicably, drowns. Terrible, awful, sad news. Florence’s older sister, Fannie, had a miscarriage the year before. She is pregnant again, but in the hospital with some complications. Desperate to spare her the emotional trauma of hearing of the death of her little sister, with its potential for impacting this pregnancy, Esther and Joseph Adler decide to keep the information from her until she has delivered her baby. And the die is cast. How to keep Fannie from knowing the truth before she can complete her pregnancy safely.


Rachel Beanland - image from NY Times

There are seven primary characters here, Florence’s parents, Esther and Joseph Adler, Florence’s pregnant older sister, Fannie, Fannie’s husband Isaac Feldman, their amazingly charming seven-year-old daughter, Gussie, Anna Epstein, a 20-something refugee from the Nazis the Adlers are putting up, and Stuart Williams, the handsome, charming, sweet-natured swimming instructor who was helping Florence with her training, and who was infatuated with her.

The story of Florence Adler and her family is based on the true story of a young woman named Florence Lowenthal. She was my great, great aunt. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know about Florence’s drowning or about the family’s decision to keep her death a secret from her older sister, who was pregnant and on hospital bedrest. My mother and grandmother spoke of the decision—unequivocally—as the right thing to do, but I always wondered how that secret affected both mother and daughter and whether there might have been another way forward. - from the B&N bookclub version

Once the stage is set, the characters drive the story. We see most of these folks through their relationship with Florence, who quits the scene pretty early in the book, but also get a back (and front) story for them as well. Anna is the daughter of a woman Joseph had grown up with in Hungary. Esther is suspicious of her, resentful of family resources being spent on a stranger, whose relationship to her husband was not entirely clear. It is through Anna’s travails that we get a look at some of the horrors entailed in Jews trying to flee Nazi Germany for the states. It is 1934 and Nazis demand that Jews wanting to emigrate leave all their capital in Germany, while the USA was insisting that they be able to prove that they would not become dependent on the state. Joseph Heller would recognize this particular catch. There are some other machinations involved in the immigration process of the time that were entirely news to me. Anna takes a shine to Stuart after the accident, and asks for swimming lessons. Seems too soon, but there are powerful forces driving her need. Of course, she really, really likes Stuart, and he has become suddenly, if tragically, available.

Fannie’s husband, Isaac, is a piece of work. Seemingly a gambler at heart, he makes a raft of bad decisions, both before he finds his way to Atlantic City, and after he meets and weds Fannie. That he spends so little time visiting his wife in the hospital speaks volumes about his quality as a person. Yet, somehow, he and Fannie had produced…

Gussie, who is as well-spoken, precocious, and charming a seven-year-old as you are likely to meet. Of course, she is still a child, and has her limitations.

Children could be so mean. She [Esther] remembered thinking so when she was raising her own girls. They were often too honest, the words they chose too blunt. Their worlds were big and bold and colorful but they were not yet able to distinguish that colors had values, that words had nuance. They described the people around them as old or young, ugly or beautiful, fat or thin, never recognizing that there were kinder, gentler, more forgiving words that lay in between. Sometimes, when Gussie talked about Florence’s death, so matter-of-factly, Esther couldn’t help but feel like she’d been cut open, left exposed.

But Gussie is pure of heart, and you will warm to her every time she crosses the page. Would be nice, however, if she didn’t wander off on her own so much. Tough on the nerves, that. She is smitten, as are many, with…

Stuart Williams, not only gorgeous, and fit, a lifeguard, but incredibly responsible, ethical, and sweet (and, really, too too good to be true). Also heir to a hotel fortune, the flagship property well in sight of his lifeguard postings. Too bad pop is a raging anti-semite. Stuart wants as little to do with his father as possible, but he is far from free enough to be his own man quite yet. Still, a good all-around egg.

Fannie, and her pregnancy, is the focus of everyone’s concerns. The look we get of her centers on her reactions to the restrictions placed on her at the hospital. It requires a bit of a stretch to believe that she would not have burst through those, but then this is based on a real-life story, so I suppose there are some real-world towers to support those suspensions. The other element of Fannie we see is her marriage to Isaac. Not the best.

Esther takes the lead on running this counter-intelligence operation, supporting one daughter, while mourning another. Tough spot to be in. Clearly a strong woman, she has her chinks as well. She has some good instincts, fretting about Isaac, for example, and wondering why Joseph was so eager to help out his friend Inez and her daughter, Anna. But her Jewish-centeredness can also be a blunt shield to keep even the best people at a distance. She takes on some big personal questions through this challenge, one of which has to do with her husband…

Joseph is a successful businessman, having built his Atlantic City bakery into a growing concern. It allows him to provide for his family and offer support to his community. Part of this is to take in a refugee from Nazism. He is a decent father and a good man. Maybe not as attentive as he might be on the family front, but not horrible. He does what he can, which is a fair bit, some of it pretty daring, to try to see to the happiness of his daughters, and tries to be an even better man.

The structure is a chronologically linear primary story, with backstory segments filling in the history of the main characters. You should have no difficulty traversing characters and when things are taking place.

Florence Adler Swims Forever offers an engaging look at a time and a place, the world in the throes of Nazism, and the impact of that on Jews in and near Atlantic City, and those trapped in the Europe of the beast. It also looks at different ways in which people grieve, and how that grief can fester if left unattended. It takes on the ways in which secrecy is handled. When is it ok? How much is too much? Who gets to decide? And the damage that can be done when secrets are exposed. This is a tale of warmth, love, and the extreme and sometimes comical lengths to which a family will go to protect one of their own. There is a gentleness to this book, a tenderness, a kindness, like speaking softly to someone in grief. But there is also humor, and a steely-eyed gaze at behavior and decision-making. Quite the combination. And yeah, it can be sappy. So what? Be prepared to go Awwwwwwww. You are going to need a handy supply of tissues to read this one. And at a little over three hundred fast-reading pages, it will take you much, much less than forever to get through it. In fact, you might wish Florence would swim a bit longer while you enjoyed the sand and sun, and slowly sipped a delicious umbrella’d drink. Here’s hoping Rachel Beanland has more family tales, or even made up ones, to share with us in the years ahead. Come on in. the water’s fine.

Review first posted – July 24, 2020

Publication dates
==========July 7, 2020 - hardcover
==========June 1, 2021 - trade paperback

It was a Barnes & Noble Book Club selection for July 2020

I received an ARE of this book from Simon & Schuster in return for a review without sand in the creases. But let’s keep that just between us for now, ok?

And thanks to MC. You know who you are.

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages

Items of Interest
----- Rachel Beanland on Writing Florence Adler Swims Forever - from the B&N bookclub edition
----- How a Tragic Drowning Inspired Rachel Beanland's Florence Adler Swims Forever

-----Viewable on line at Trove - Fairy Tales of the South Seas by Annette Kellerman – illustrated by Marcelle Wooster
-----Wiki on Tender is the Night