Twenty years ago, Vivian Silver abandoned her dreams of travel to marry the mysterious Jeb Wheeler, seduced both by his unnerving charm and his acres of untamed New Hampshire land. The hand-built house and swimming pond become the center of the universe for their entire family. Lila, their youngest, is consumed with love for her two older brothers, Aaron and Jack, and remains blind to the simmering tension between them. For beneath the surface of their idyllic setting lies a depth of explosive feeling that none of them can control. Into this heated atmosphere glides Aaron’s girlfriend, Suzanne, whose presence is threatening, exciting; Lila thrills to the ominous quality of Aaron’s absolute adoration for this young woman. Before her visit is over, Suzanne will unleash the forces of rage between Aaron and Jack, compelling one brother to commit an act against the other that can never be taken back. A decade later, living in New York, Lila still searches for Aaron, who disappeared that night, and Suzanne, whose mystique still exerts a hold on her memory. For Lila to move past her family’s tragedy, she must piece together what happened that fateful weekend–and recover the things lost down by the water–before she can at last let them go. A stunning literary novel that captures the lingering effects of longing and loss, Swimming is by turns a gripping family story, a heartbreaking coming of age journey, and a suspenseful psychological investigation into the meaning and limits of fidelity, identity, and intimacy.

Swimming

Literature & Fiction

Hershon, Joanna

United States

Ballantine Books

Critics and readers alike hailed Swimming, Joanna Hershon’s fiction debut. “Compelling,” said the Washington Post, while Vanity Fair called Swimming a “page-turning premiere.” Now Hershon brings us her anticipated second novel, in which she vividly explores the secrets of an American family. The Outside of August is a mesmerizing, beautifully written story that combs the emotional landscape of its characters with power and precision. For as long as Alice Green can remember, her elusive mother, Charlotte, has moved in and out of family life—disappearing relentlessly and often without explanation. Despite the exotic clutter of souvenirs that detail Charlotte’s international travels, the Green’s home becomes progressively hollow, as nothing but Charlotte can fill the empty spaces. With their mother’s tenuous presence, and their tender but distant father working long hours, Alice and her brother, August, react in different ways. While seeking constant affection from other women, August relies on an unspoken bond with Charlotte that allows him a certain freedom. But Alice feels no such security and grows increasingly unmoored, always in search of ways to keep her mother at home. When, years later, her unfettered brother becomes strangely remote, Alice journeys to find him in an isolated beach town. It is there that a deeply buried secret will have to unravel in order for Alice to come to terms with her fractured family and her place within it—and learn to let go of a mother she perhaps never really knew.

The Outside of August

The Outside of August: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Twenty years ago, Vivian Silver abandoned her dreams of travel to marry the mysterious Jeb Wheeler, seduced both by his unnerving charm and his acres of untamed New Hampshire land. The hand-built house and swimming pond become the center of the universe for their entire family. Lila, their youngest, is consumed with love for her two older brothers, Aaron and Jack, and remains blind to the simmering tension between them. For beneath the surface of their idyllic setting lies a depth of explosive feeling that none of them can control. Into this heated atmosphere glides Aaron’s girlfriend, Suzanne, whose presence is threatening, exciting; Lila thrills to the ominous quality of Aaron’s absolute adoration for this young woman. Before her visit is over, Suzanne will unleash the forces of rage between Aaron and Jack, compelling one brother to commit an act against the other that can never be taken back. A decade later, living in New York, Lila still searches for Aaron, who disappeared that night, and Suzanne, whose mystique still exerts a hold on her memory. For Lila to move past her family’s tragedy, she must piece together what happened that fateful weekend–and recover the things lost down by the water–before she can at last let them go. A stunning literary novel that captures the lingering effects of longing and loss, Swimming is by turns a gripping family story, a heartbreaking coming of age journey, and a suspenseful psychological investigation into the meaning and limits of fidelity, identity, and intimacy. From the Hardcover edition.

Swimming (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Literary

Berlin, 1865. Eva Frank, the daughter of a benevolent Jewish banker, and her sister, Henriette, are having their portrait painted–which leads to a secret affair between young Eva and the mercurial artist. This indiscretion has far-reaching consequences, more devastating than Eva or her family could have imagined. Distraught and desperate to escape her painful situation, Eva hastily marries Abraham Shein, an ambitious merchant who has returned home to Germany for the first time in a decade since establishing himself in the American West. The eighteen-year-old bride leaves Berlin and its ghosts for an unfamiliar life halfway across the world, traversing the icy waters of the Atlantic and the rugged, sweeping terrain of the Santa Fe Trail. Though Eva’s existence in the rough and burgeoning community of Sante Fe, New Mexico, is a far cry from her life as a daughter of privilege, she soon begins to settle into the mystifying town, determined to create a home. But this new setting cannot keep at bay the overwhelming memories of her former life, nor can it protect her from an increasing threat to her own safety that will force Eva to make a fateful decision. Joanna Hershon’s novel is a gripping and gritty portrayal of urban European immigrants struggling with New World frontier life in the mid-nineteenth century. Vivid and emotionally compelling, The German Bride is also a beautiful narrative on how far one must travel to make peace with the past.

The German Bride: A Novel

Berlin, 1861. Eva Frank, a sixteen-year-old Jewess, has her portrait painted, which leads to an indiscretion that has devastating consequences. Desperate to escape a painful situation, Eva marries Abraham Shein, an ambitious merchant who has returned home to Germany for the first time in a decade since establishing himself in the American West. The young bride leaves Berlin and its ghosts for an unfamiliar life halfway across the world, traversing the icy waters of the Atlantic and the rugged, sweeping terrain of the Santa Fe Trail. Though Eva’s existence in the rough and burgeoning community of Sante Fe, New Mexico, is a far cry from her life as a daughter of privilege, she soon begins to settle into the mystifying town. But this new setting cannot keep at bay the overwhelming memories of her former life, nor can it protect her from an increasing threat to her own safety that will force Eva to make a fateful decision.

For readers of Rules of Civility and The Marriage Plot, Joanna Hershon’s A Dual Inheritance is an engrossing novel of passion, friendship, betrayal, and class—and their reverberations across generations. Autumn 1962: Ed Cantowitz and Hugh Shipley meet in their final year at Harvard. Ed is far removed from Hugh’s privileged upbringing as a Boston Brahmin, yet his drive and ambition outpace Hugh’s ambivalence about his own life. These two young men form an unlikely friendship, bolstered by a fierce shared desire to transcend their circumstances. But in just a few short years, not only do their paths diverge—one rising on Wall Street, the other becoming a kind of global humanitarian—but their friendship ends abruptly, with only one of them understanding why. Can a friendship define your view of the world? Spanning from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the present-day stock market collapse, with locations as diverse as Dar es Salaam, Boston, Shenzhen, and Fishers Island, A Dual Inheritance asks this question, as it follows not only these two men, but the complicated women in their vastly different lives. And as Ed and Hugh grow farther and farther apart, they remain uniquely—even surprisingly—connected. Praise for A Dual Inheritance “A big, captivating sweep of a romance . . . a searching exploration of class and destiny in late-twentieth-century America.”—Jennifer Egan “The best book about male friendship written this young century.”—Details “[A] warm, smart, enjoyably complex novel . . . Both Hugh and Ed are lonely searchers . . . and [Hershon’s] skill in rendering each of them as flawed individuals is what makes the novel so readable and so rich. . . . A Dual Inheritance is an old-fashioned social novel that feels fresh because of its deft, clear-eyed approach to still-unspoken rules about ethnicity, money and identity.”—San Francisco Chronicle “An absorbing, fully-realized novel . . . [Hershon] renders the book’s many locales with a nuanced appreciation for the way environment emerges out of the confluence of physical detail and social experience. . . . A Dual Inheritance never lets its readers forget they are reading a well-crafted novel, and as a well-crafted novel, it fully satisfies.”—The Boston Globe “This marvelous novel is a mix of heartache and history. . . . Think of Anne Tyler and Tom Wolfe, both.”—Victor LaValle, author of The Devil in Silver “[An] engrossing saga.”—Vogue “Hershon artfully guides us through the lives of Ed and Hugh, college buddies who meet at Harvard in the ’60s, shifting between their perspectives through adulthood to detail their lingering impact on one another’s lives in such a way that it’ll make you take a second look at all of your relationships.”—GQ “Let this story of two Harvard men’s unexpected friendship and its sudden end transport you through time (beginning on Harvard’s campus in 1962) and place.”—The Huffington Post “A richly composed . . . portrait of familial gravity and the wobbly orbits that bring us together again and again.”—Kirkus Reviews “This thought-provoking generational tale is a heartfelt and beautiful story of an unlikely friendship that fades at times, but never seems to go away.”—Long Island Press

A Dual Inheritance: A Novel

For readers of Rules of Civility and The Marriage Plot, Joanna Hershon’s A Dual Inheritance is an engrossing novel of passion, friendship, betrayal, and class—and their reverberations across generations. Autumn 1962: Ed Cantowitz and Hugh Shipley meet in their final year at Harvard. Ed is far removed from Hugh’s privileged upbringing as a Boston Brahmin, yet his drive and ambition outpace Hugh’s ambivalence about his own life. These two young men form an unlikely friendship, bolstered by a fierce shared desire to transcend their circumstances. But in just a few short years, not only do their paths diverge—one rising on Wall Street, the other becoming a kind of global humanitarian—but their friendship ends abruptly, with only one of them understanding why. Can a friendship define your view of the world? Spanning from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the present-day stock market collapse, with locations as diverse as Dar es Salaam, Boston, Shenzhen, and Fishers Island, A Dual Inheritance asks this question, as it follows not only these two men, but the complicated women in their vastly different lives. And as Ed and Hugh grow farther and farther apart, they remain uniquely—even surprisingly—connected. Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. “A big, captivating sweep of a romance . . . a searching exploration of class and destiny in late-twentieth-century America.”—Jennifer Egan “The best book about male friendship written this young century.”—Details “[A] warm, smart, enjoyably complex novel . . . Both Hugh and Ed are lonely searchers . . . and [Hershon’s] skill in rendering each of them as flawed individuals is what makes the novel so readable and so rich. . . . A Dual Inheritance is an old-fashioned social novel that feels fresh because of its deft, clear-eyed approach to still-unspoken rules about ethnicity, money and identity.”—San Francisco Chronicle “An absorbing, fully-realized novel . . . [Hershon] renders the book’s many locales with a nuanced appreciation for the way environment emerges out of the confluence of physical detail and social experience. . . . A Dual Inheritance never lets its readers forget they are reading a well-crafted novel, and as a well-crafted novel, it fully satisfies.”—The Boston Globe “This marvelous novel is a mix of heartache and history. . . . Think of Anne Tyler and Tom Wolfe, both.”—Victor LaValle, author of The Devil in Silver “[An] engrossing saga.”—Vogue “Hershon artfully guides us through the lives of Ed and Hugh, college buddies who meet at Harvard in the ’60s, shifting between their perspectives through adulthood to detail their lingering impact on one another’s lives in such a way that it’ll make you take a second look at all of your relationships.”—GQ “Let this story of two Harvard men’s unexpected friendship and its sudden end transport you through time (beginning on Harvard’s campus in 1962) and place.”—The Huffington Post “A richly composed . . . portrait of familial gravity and the wobbly orbits that bring us together again and again.”—Kirkus Reviews

Over the course of a weekend, two couples reckon with the long-hidden secrets that have shaped their families, in a charged, poignant novel of motherhood and friendship It’s the end of summer when we meet Sarah, the end of summer and the middle of her life, the middle of her career (she hopes it’s not the end), the middle of her marriage (recently repaired). And despite the years that have passed since she last saw her daughter, she is still very much in the middle of figuring out what happened to Leda, what role she played, and how she will let that loss affect the rest of her life.
Enter a mysterious stranger on a train, an older man taking the subway to Brooklyn who sees right into her.Then a mugging, her phone stolen, and with it any last connection to Leda. And then an invitation, friends from the past and a weekend in the country with their new, unexpected baby.
Over the course of three hot September days, the two couples try to reconnect. Events that have been set in motion, circumstances and feelings kept hidden, rise to the surface, forcing each to ask not just how they ended up where they are, but how they ended up who they are.
Unwinding like a suspense novel, Joanna Hershon's St. Ivo is a powerful investigation into the meaning of choice and family, whether we ever know the people closest to us, and how, when someone goes missing from our lives, we can ever let them go.

St. Ivo: A Novel

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

For readers of Rules of Civility and The Marriage Plot, Joanna Hershon’s A Dual Inheritance is an engrossing novel of passion, friendship, betrayal, and class—and their reverberations across generations. Autumn 1962: Ed Cantowitz and Hugh Shipley meet in their final year at Harvard. Ed is far removed from Hugh’s privileged upbringing as a Boston Brahmin, yet his drive and ambition outpace Hugh’s ambivalence about his own life. These two young men form an unlikely friendship, bolstered by a fierce shared desire to transcend their circumstances. But in just a few short years, not only do their paths diverge—one rising on Wall Street, the other becoming a kind of global humanitarian—but their friendship ends abruptly, with only one of them understanding why. Can a friendship define your view of the world? Spanning from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the present-day stock market collapse, with locations as diverse as Dar es Salaam, Boston, Shenzhen, and Fishers Island, A Dual Inheritance asks this question, as it follows not only these two men, but the complicated women in their vastly different lives. And as Ed and Hugh grow farther and farther apart, they remain uniquely—even surprisingly—connected. Praise for A Dual Inheritance “A big, captivating sweep of a romance . . . a searching exploration of class and destiny in late-twentieth-century America.”—Jennifer Egan “The best book about male friendship written this young century.”—Details “[A] warm, smart, enjoyably complex novel . . . Both Hugh and Ed are lonely searchers . . . and [Hershon’s] skill in rendering each of them as flawed individuals is what makes the novel so readable and so rich. . . . A Dual Inheritance is an old-fashioned social novel that feels fresh because of its deft, clear-eyed approach to still-unspoken rules about ethnicity, money and identity.”—San Francisco Chronicle “An absorbing, fully-realized novel . . . [Hershon] renders the book’s many locales with a nuanced appreciation for the way environment emerges out of the confluence of physical detail and social experience. . . . A Dual Inheritance never lets its readers forget they are reading a well-crafted novel, and as a well-crafted novel, it fully satisfies.”—The Boston Globe “This marvelous novel is a mix of heartache and history. . . . Think of Anne Tyler and Tom Wolfe, both.”—Victor LaValle, author of The Devil in Silver “[An] engrossing saga.”—Vogue “Hershon artfully guides us through the lives of Ed and Hugh, college buddies who meet at Harvard in the ’60s, shifting between their perspectives through adulthood to detail their lingering impact on one another’s lives in such a way that it’ll make you take a second look at all of your relationships.”—GQ “Let this story of two Harvard men’s unexpected friendship and its sudden end transport you through time (beginning on Harvard’s campus in 1962) and place.”—The Huffington Post “A richly composed . . . portrait of familial gravity and the wobbly orbits that bring us together again and again.”—Kirkus Reviews “This thought-provoking generational tale is a heartfelt and beautiful story of an unlikely friendship that fades at times, but never seems to go away.”—Long Island Press From the Hardcover edition.

Random House Audio |

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Books by Hershon, Joanna

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hershon, Joanna. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Swimming

The Outside of August

The Outside of August: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Swimming (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

The German Bride: A Novel

The German Bride: A Novel

A Dual Inheritance: A Novel

A Dual Inheritance: A Novel

St. Ivo: A Novel

A Dual Inheritance: A Novel