How Sweet It Is!: A Novel

by Thane Rosenbaum

Overview

Set in Miami Beach, Florida in 1972, the novel follows the Posner family—two Holocaust survivors, Sophie and Jacob, and their son, Adam—doing everything they can to avoid one another in a city with an infinite supply of colorful diversions. In this year, Miami Beach was the site of both the Republican and Democratic political conventions, and saw the rise of the counterculture, the Cold War, and the desegregation of the old South. The novel is enriched by the presence of historical characters such as Jackie Gleason, Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali, I. B. Singer, Meyer Lansky and a comical crew of fading gangsters. There is even a sighting of Fidel Castro. For these two Holocaust survivors and their son, Miami Beach was to be their salvation. Where better to blend in, regain one's sanity, and live their lives? Instead what they discover is that Miami Beach is not a place of camouflage—all that sunshine highlighted the very things they wished to forget, and the abundant sun turned their lives into a Disney World of funhouse mirrors and chaotic rides, giving them a front row seat through a transformational year in American culture, politics and world history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781942134169
Publisher:	Mandel Vilar Press
Publication date:	04/07/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Thane Rosenbaum is the author of the novels, The Stranger Within Sarah Stein, The Golems of Gotham, Second Hand Smoke, and Elijah Visible. His essays appear frequently in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Huffington Post. A Senior Fellow at New York University School of Law, he is the author of Payback: The Case for Revenge and The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What's Right.

What People are Saying About This

Dara Horn

A powerful time capsule: open its covers and you enter a bittersweet moment in American Jewish history….It's all here—gangsters, survivors, flower children, school integration, Yiddish literature, the Munich Olympics, and the strange and beautiful possibilities of catastrophe and renewal in the elephant graveyard of 20th century American Jews, Miami Beach. Dive in and enjoy --Dara Horn, author of A Guide for the Perplexed and The World to Come

Lara Vapnyar

How Sweet It Is plunges its fictional character into the thrilling, dangerous and often absurd world of Miami in the 70s, and as a result the readers get to experience the historical events as if from the inside. It's that rare book that manages to be both intensely informative and huge joy to read." -- Lara Vapnyar, author of There Are Jews in My House and Memoirs of a Muse.

Gary Shteyngart

Fans of the greater Miami megalopolis rejoice! Finally there's a novel that nails your part of the world!" -- Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan