Crossing Brooklyn Ferry - Hardcover

Fields, Jennie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688145892 ISBN 13: 9780688145897

Publisher: William Morrow, 1997

Synopsis

Escaping the narrow, wealthy life she led in Manhattan, Zoe Finney moves her family to a brownstone in working-class Park Slope, Brooklyn. A poor girl who has married into money, Zoe finds comfort and familiarity in the close-knit neighborhood. She hopes the change will reinvigorate her profoundly depressed husband and provide a happy place for Rose, her young daughter, to grow.

Her arrival in the neighborhood alters the lives around her. The handsome schoolteacher next door, Keevan O'Connor, is deeply drawn to her, and despite Zoe's initial hesitation, they begin to fall in love. Rose is thrilled, recognizing in Keevan the warm, fun-loving father hers can never be. But others don't want this relationship to thrive: Keevan's unhappily married sister-in-law, Patty, who has secretly fallen in love with him; and Zoe's husband, who wakes from his depression to see his wife slipping away. Is it right for Zoe to turn from the man who's been her life for so long and start a new life with Keevan? But then again, how can two people so perfectly matched not spend their future together?

About this title

Review:

Care to take an early spring ramble through a neighborhood of Brooklyn brownstones? Crossing Brooklyn Ferry opens languidly, as if a camera held in the distance panned slowly along the tree-lined street of Zoe Finnery's new neighborhood, where she's moved with her husband and 6-year-old daughter. A working-class gal and daughter of Holocaust survivors, Zoe has already transformed her life by marrying into wealth. But husband Jamie has slipped into a paralyzing depression, and perhaps this new move--from Manhattan affluence to Brooklyn blue-collar--sets into motion a case of romantic love to which Zoe hesitatantly succumbs. Her lover lives next door, is virile (this is a blue-collar neighborhood, after all), and reads good books by the likes of Jane Austen, Richard Russo, Thackeray, and Alison Lurie.

In this second novel, Jennie Fields explores through different configurations the sexual themes established in her first novel, Lily Beach. But where the first dwelled in darkness (a woman's compulsive sexuality as pain medication), Crossing Brooklyn Ferry posits the lighter side of lust--transformation through romantic love.

From the Publisher:

A richly textured tale of the redemptive powers of love

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0688145892
• ISBN 13: 9780688145897
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256