An exhilarating novel about one American family, the dark moment that shatters their suburban paradise, and the wild legacy of trauma and inheritance by the New York Times bestselling author "Fleishman Is in Trouble."
Join us at the Garden Club at Wild Heaven West End for a special evening with Taffy Brodesser-Akner in honor of her highly-anticipated new book, "Long Island Compromise." The author will appear in conversation with Atlanta's own Jessica Handler, award-winning author of "The Magnetic Girl."
Tickets include a signed hardcover edition of the book.
Please note: Although tickets are non-refundable, if you cannot attend, your ticket still entitles you to a signed copy of the book. A Cappella Books will hold your book for one month from the event date. You may pick it up in-store or call us to request shipping.
About the Book
“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.
About the Author
Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and the New York Times bestselling author of "Fleishman Is in Trouble," which has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She is also the creator and executive producer of its Emmy-nominated limited series adaptation for FX. "Long Island Compromise" is her second novel.
About the Conversation Partner
Jessica Handler is the author of "The Magnetic Girl," winner of the 2020 Southern Book Prize, an Indie Next selection, Wall Street Journal Spring '19 pick, Bitter Southerner Summer '19 pick and SIBA Okra pick. She is the author of the nonfiction books "Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing About Grief" and "Invisible Sisters: A Memoir," which was named one of the "Books All Georgians Should Read" and Atlanta Magazine's "Best Memoir of 2009." Jessica's essays and nonfiction features have appeared on NPR, in Tin House, Drunken Boat, Full Grown People, Brevity, The Bitter Southerner, Electric Literature, Oldster, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and More Magazine. She lives in Atlanta with her husband, novelist Mickey Dubrow.
