Crossing Brooklyn Ferry: A Novel - Softcover

Fields, Jennie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060099437 ISBN 13: 9780060099435

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2002

Synopsis

Escaping the narrow, wealthy life she led in Manhattan, Zoe Finney moves her family to Park Slope, Brooklyn, an area of beautiful old brownstones where working-class families have lived for generations.A poor girl who married into money, Zoe finds comfort in the close-knit neighborhood.She hopes the change will reinvigorate her profoundly depressed husband and provide a happy place for her small daughter, Rose, to grow.

But her arrival there alters the lives around her, especially the handsome schoolteacher next door, Keevan O'Connor, who is deeply drawn to her. Despite Zoe's initial hesitation, they begin to fall in love. Rose is thrilled, recognizing in Keevan the warm, fun-loving father hers could never be. But when Zoe's husband wakes from his depression to see his wife slipping away, Zoe is torn between her love for two men.

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 Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0060099437
• ISBN 13: 9780060099435
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384