Description: Nineteen fifty-three, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Chenia Arnow is a petite, sensuous, Betty Grable look-alike, a Russian emigree whose Old World fear of the evil eye and heavily accented English cannot mask her fierce intelligence and wit. Her husband, Ruben, is both a charmer and miserly, often absent, with a penchant for trumped-up lawsuits. He has a mistress. Chenia is pregnant.

It is this child, a daughter, now grown up and looking back, who tells the story of her parents' marriage. Of how Chenia embarks on her own love affair. Of how her initial shame and guilt are overcome by happiness. Of how the affair threatens to end when Ruben suddenly moves his family -- closer to his own lover.

As the infidelities progress, as accompanying deceptions -- increasingly complex and often comical -- infuse and dominate the texture of their lives, the marriage moves inexorably toward a point of crisis and ultimate determination.

Summoning up the Jewish immigrant world of the mid-20th century, Swimming Toward the Ocean is a novel that both touches and entertains us with its depiction of the workings of these human hearts.

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