Author Joshua Henkin did not go to Yale, and he insists that his novel is not autobiographical. But he admits that he does draw upon some personal experiences, at least in setting the scene for the characters of Swimming Across the Hudson. Indeed, it is very easy to accept this latter claim, because the novel takes place in America of the nineties, and its protagonists, Ben Suskind and his brother Jonathan, are members of our own society. They deal with the same social issues as we do, and they lead lives which are palpable in this context.

Part of what makes Ben and Jonathan real is that, like most members of our society, they appear normal and standard but remain a bit unique. Products of a New York Yeshiva high school and Yale, the brothers are now 31 and live in San Francisco. Ben teaches high school history and lives with his girlfriend and her daughter from a previous marriage. Jonathan is a doctor. The book does not focus, however, on the present, as it is their formative years that really make these characters unique.

Scenes from the brothers' Upper West Side childhood are vividly recalled, and Ben returns to his parents' house and even to his high school during the course of the novel. None of this seems so unusual. The catch is that Ben and Jonathan are adopted, and much of the plot revolves around Ben's attempts to learn about and then cope with his roots. Ben meets his birth mother, tries to determine why and under what circumstances he was put up for adoption. He discovers what type of relationship he can have with his birth mother and she with his adopted parents. We find Ben wondering where he really comes from, whose child he is, and which experiences have led him to his current life.

Perhaps it is not really accurate to call the brothers' childhood their formative years. It is really at Yale that Jonathan and Ben begin to make choices which inform the rest of their lives and which make their seeimgly "normal" family interesting enough to be the subject of a novel. Ben recalls the day the two brothers arrived as freshmen on Old Campus, when they rejected the traditions of their father's Orthodoxy. He remembers when Jonathan told him, before telling their parents, that he was homosexual and living with a partner. Jonathan's homosexuality and Ben's connection to his religion are integral parts of each brother's personality, and the brothers struggle with them as they attempt to bolster their relationship.

For Ben, adoption remains the most central and volatile aspect of his character: it has the potential to challenge other basic, once accepted parts of his personality. His father had assured him that he had been born Jewish, but when he meets his birth mother and discovers otherwise, he is forced to wonder whether, and on what grounds, Judaism is his true heritage. Furthermore, he has always known Jonathan as a brother, united by a bond more substantial than blood: Jonathan was adopted only five months after Ben because, as their parents told them, "each of you was beautiful." But when Ben accidentally discovers his brother's adoption papers in his parents' attic, he must fully confront the fact that even blood has never united them.

This confrontation with the past is further complicated by the fact that Jonathan generally remains skeptical of Ben's attempts to trace his own roots. Here, despite thanking Ben for the discovery, Jonathan asks his brother to leave the adoption papers untouched, and the reader finds himself hoping that Ben will listen to his brother's plea.

By delving into the brothers' pasts, the book draws out issues which are relevant to members of today's society. Without too forceful a tone, the novel deals with adoption, questions of Jewish identity and the wrangling associated with decisions on interfaith marriage, homosexuality, fears of AIDS, and the broken dreams of aging parents. The novel raises the question of when the brothers' formative years truly were, and this question in turn leads the reader to the very essence of the novel.

For as Joshua Henkin says himself, the essence of the book is an examination of character and of relationships. The societal issues, and the difficulty of whether their manifestations can be called "formative," arise in different forms in a vast array of human relationships and in the formation of many peoples' characters. The relationships found within this book are variations of those found every day in our own society; the personalities are products of environments similar to ours and for all practical purposes could be people whom we know or may meet tomorrow.

No, Joshua Henkin did not go to Yale, and no, Swimming Across the Hudson is not overtly autobiographical. But the author's ability to root his novel in issues of contemporary society, while dealing provocatively with issues that run much deeper, makes for a novel that Yalies, Jews, and any members of our society would find worth reading.

Evan K Farber, BR'99, is a former Managing Editor of Urim v'Tumim. He met with Joshua Henkin during the author's recent visit to Yale Hillel.