Florence Adler Swims Forever

Florence Adler Swims Forever is a 2020 historical fiction novel by Rachel Beanland based on the story of the death of her great-great-aunt, Florence Lowenthal. In the novel, Florence Adler drowns while training to swim the English Channel, but her family decides to keep her death a secret from her sister, Fannie, who is on bed rest, pregnant with a child who may not survive. Over the course of the summer, the Adlers confront their private grief as they navigate the consequences of the Great Depression and Hitler’s rising power in Europe. The novel also explores themes of The Complexity of Gender Expectations and The Costs and Benefits of Secrecy. The book received positive reception when it was published and received the 2020 National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction.

This guide refers to the 2020 Simon & Schuster e-book edition.

Content Warning: This text discusses antisemitism, infant loss, loss of children, Nazi Germany, and racism.

Plot Summary

The novel consists of three parts, each covering one month of the summer of 1934: June, July, and August. There are seven chapters in each part, and each chapter follows one of the main characters from a third-person limited perspective: Gussie, Esther, Fannie, Joseph, Isaac, Stuart, and Anna.

The novel opens with Gussie. She is excited to be at the beach with her aunt, Florence, but less enthused to be with Anna, who is staying with the Adlers for the summer before attending the New Jersey State Teachers College. Anna has come to America from Germany to escape Hitler’s increasing oppression of Jewish people; in fact, she was not accepted to any German universities because she is Jewish. Joseph, her mother’s former fiancé, helped her get a student visa and is now working to bring her parents over from Germany.

Florence plays with Gussie and then decides to go for a swim. Despite being a strong swimmer who is training to swim the English Channel, she inexplicably drowns. Lifeguards and the medical team at the beach desperately try to resuscitate her, but she is pronounced dead after several hours. The family is grief-stricken, but Esther, Florence’s mother, quickly realizes that Florence’s death must be kept a secret from her sister, Fannie, who is in the hospital. Fannie is experiencing a difficult pregnancy after giving premature birth the previous year and subsequently losing the child. Esther and her husband, Joseph, formulate a plan to keep Florence’s death out of the newspapers and to convince the entirety of the hospital staff to keep Florence’s death from Fannie. Stuart—Florence’s friend, coach, and admirer—explains the situation to the lifeguards, who immediately agree to keep the secret.

However, mourning the loss of Florence while keeping the secret from Fannie soon wears on the family. Anna especially becomes a point of tension, as Esther becomes suspicious of Joseph’s continued efforts to help Anna and her family even after his own daughter’s death. In reality, Joseph feels obligated to help Anna and her family because he was engaged to Inez, Anna’s mother, when he was living in Hungary; he even promised to bring her to America with him. However, after meeting Esther, he broke off his engagement with Inez. He was too afraid to tell Esther any of this because he did not want to hurt her. When she finds out about the story after reading the affidavit letter he wrote on behalf of Anna’s parents, she feels betrayed. She feels even more hurt when Joseph reveals that he used the money that Florence had saved for her English Channel swim to start a trust for Anna’s parents. The combined strain of Joseph’s secrecy, Florence’s death and the secrecy around it, and Anna’s continued presence tests Esther’s and Joseph’s relationship.

Concurrently, Isaac tries to strike out on his own. He disappointed the Adlers in the past by losing all of his and Fannie’s money in a bad investment and resents this failure: He now works at Joseph’s bread factory and hates being beholden to Joseph for both his job and for the loan that saved him and Fannie from financial ruin. He therefore invests in a deal with an old colleague from his days selling undeveloped plots of swamp in Florida. He tries to get Joseph and Stuart to invest, but both pass on what they see as a scam. Isaac loses his investment, part of which is his poor father’s entire savings. By the end of the novel, Joseph sees that Isaac will ruin Fannie with his poor decisions and dissatisfaction, so he offers to pay Isaac to leave town. Isaac agrees and abandons his family.

In a third interconnected arc, Stuart, who is the son of an antisemitic and racist hotel owner, supports the Adler family, first out of love for Florence and then out of love for Anna. He helps Joseph contact Florence’s coach to get his deposit back and helps Joseph grieve throughout the summer. He also teaches Anna how to swim, and by the end of the summer he falls in love with her. After several failed attempts by Joseph and the American Jewish Committee to secure a visa for Anna’s parents, Anna explains the situation to Stuart and blurts out that she was advised to marry an American to secure her parents’ visas. Though Stuart is at first angry, he decides that he wants to marry Anna but does not want her decision to be tied to her parents’ immigration. Despite his previous resistance to going into the family business, he agrees to work for his father in exchange for $5,000. He uses this to open a trust in Anna’s parents’ names, which should be enough to convince the American consulate to grant them a visa. He then proposes to Anna and she accepts.

The novel ends with the birth of Ruby, Fannie’s daughter. Her name is significant because it serves as a reminder of the secret that potentially allowed for her healthy birth. According to Jewish tradition, babies are often named after a close family member who has recently passed. Ruby should have been named Florence. However, Florence’s memory lives on in the Adler family, and in the end all secrets are revealed. The family is transformed and begins to heal.