Long Island Compromise; A Novel

A Family’s Legacy. A Ransom Paid. A Debt Unresolved.

⭐ New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
📖 New York Magazine’s Beach Read Book Club Pick
📚 Belletrist Book Club Pick

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR — The New York Times Book Review, Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, TIME, The Washington Post, NPR, Vogue, Town & Country, New York Post, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Parade, Kirkus Reviews

🔥 “Joins the pantheon of great American novels.” — Los Angeles Times
📖 “Exuberant and absorbing . . . a big old-fashioned social novel.” — The Atlantic

“Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?”

In 1980, wealthy businessman Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, held for ransom, and returned to his family just days later—physically intact but forever altered. The Fletchers tell themselves money was both the cause of their misfortune and the key to their survival. Life moves on. Or so they believe.

Nearly four decades later, the scars of that ordeal remain. Carl is obsessed with unraveling the mystery of his own abduction. His wife, Ruth, has sacrificed her own ambitions to protect him. Their three grown children are lost in their own dysfunctions: Nathan, paralyzed by anxiety; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter numbing himself with excess; and Jenny, determined to escape the family’s shadow yet unable to outrun it.

Then, they receive shocking news: the family fortune is gone. As they reckon with their past and their uncertain future, they are forced to confront an unsettling truth—was it their wealth that defined them all along?

Long Island Compromise spans generations, weaving through family secrets, American Jewish traditions, ambition, history, and survival. With sharp wit and deep insight, it explores what happens when the foundation of a family—built on money, myths, and unspoken fears—begins to crumble.