If you loved the world of “Fleishman Is In Trouble,” the award-winning book and limited series, we have the best news.
Author, journalist and showrunner Taffy Brodesser-Akner has a new book coming out in July of this year, and it sounds just as Jewish and engrossing as her debut. This time, Brodesser-Akner takes us away from New York City (and the New Jersey suburbs) all the way to the suburbs of Long Island.
The upcoming “Long Island Compromise” tells the story of a Jewish family dealing with the aftermath of the kidnapping of the family patriarch, Carl Fletcher, a wealthy businessman.
Forty years after Carl is violently taken from his family’s suburban driveway, only to be returned a week later seemingly just slightly worse-for-the-wear, the family gets together and begins to unpack how that one traumatic event has impacted their lives — from Ruth, the family matriarch, who spends her days tending to a husband still emotionally broken by the attack, to the couple’s three children, Nathan, Beamer and Jenny, who are not exactly living up to the promise of the American dream their father seemed to have built for them before that tragic day.
Then there’s Carl himself, stunted, fearful, living in the past, who commits an “unthinkable act… that will alter the family’s path forever,” according to the book’s synopsis. It all sounds very nerve-wracking in the best of ways.
Among the subjects this book promises to explore are Jewish tradition (TRADITION!) and history, the Jewish American dream and suburban life, old wives’ tales, the evil eye (pu, pu, pu), dybbuks, Mandy Patinkin (lots of that please) and the “unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever” (we already have a box of Kleenex prepared). Oh, and orgies — apparently, there are also orgies.
We’re definitely counting the days until we can read this book — and yes, we’re already thinking of an adaptation dream cast in our heads.
You can pre-order “Long Island Compromise” on Amazon, Bookshop, or wherever you buy your books.
