I LOVED this little book! Why did it take me fourteen years to find it? It's been out of print for a while now, another of those mysteries I'll never understand. Why do books this good simply disappear?!

This is a delightful story, told in very simple and straightforward language, all about what it means to be loved and the paramount importance of family. On the surface it's about adoption, religion, sexual identity, maturity - all pretty heavy topics, to be certain. Its ingenuity is the way it all seems so deceptively simple. Narrator Ben Suskind is thirty years old, but seems rather Peter Pan-ish in his inability or unwillingness to commit to a three year-old relationship with Jenny, who has an eleven year-old daughter. He's not too sure about his vocation as a private school history teacher either, turning down the offer of a department chairmanship because he'd rather play basketball after school, likes having the summer off and isn't sure if he'll even stay with the job. In fact, the only reason he seems to have moved to San Francisco after his graduation from Yale is because that's where his brother Jonathan was moving. Ben reflects fondly and at length on their orthodox Jewish upbringing in Manhattan. Both adopted and only five months apart in age, they are as close as two brothers have ever been, and have intelligent, educated and doting parents.

But Ben has always wondered about his birth parents, and finally meets his birth mother, then tries unsuccessfully to convince Jonathan to follow suit. Ben's reunion with his birth mother is awkward and less than what he'd hoped for, and yet they do become fond of each other. Henkin's treatment of this subject seems to me much more realistic than so many of the staged show-biz kind of reunions so often shown on TV these days.

I'm not sure why I'm bothering to write much here, since the book's been around as long as it has and slipped out of print - and maybe out of mind too. But this is a damn fine piece of work, especially considering it's a first novel. I found myself smiling and chuckling in recognition throughout the book. But I'm not adopted, I'm not Jewish, I've never been to New York, I don't have a gay brother, and my only experience with New Jersey is once breaking down on the NJ Turnpike. So it's hard to explain why I liked the book so much. Maybe it's the little stuff here, like Ben and Jonathan's favorite children's book, ARE YOU MY MOTHER?, and how the two, knowing they were adopted, as a lark, accosted women on the street and asked that very question. I remember reading that same book to my daughter when she was small, and how she used that book and others from the Easy Reader series to learn to read by the time she was three. And there's also the brothers' devotion to the music and persona of Bruce Springsteen, who grew up across the Hudson in New Jersey, where teenagers actually had sex. Secretly they dreamed of, well, yup, Swimming across the Hudson.

Ultimately, however, this is a book about growing up, which Ben finally does, at the perhaps advanced age of thirty-one. There is a scene near the book's end that brought tears to my eyes, when he and Jenny told his parents of their plan to marry. Ben is afraid his father will not approve since Jenny is not Jewish, and perhaps he doesn't, but here's what he does -

"He came over and kissed me on the forehead. He kissed Jenny on the forehead too. He laid his hands on Jenny's head and left them there for several seconds. In that moment I allowed myself to believe he was blessing her. For that was how he'd looked blessing Jonathan and me on Friday nights, a time when I believed my father spoke to God, when anything he said, he could make happen."

SWIMMING ACROSS THE HUDSON is a book about many things, but most of all it's a book about love. And I loved it. Fortunately I have a copy of Henkin's other novel, MATRIMONY. I can't wait to read it.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the REED CITY BOY memoir trilogy ( )