SOURCE: "What People Are Reading: A Wave of Interest Greets Swimming Across the Hudson," Detroit News, www.detnews.com, June 10, 1997.

[In the following review, Berman lauds the originality and compassion of Henkin's Swimming Across the Hudson.]

At 30, Ben Suskind, a high school teacher of history, is suddenly in the midst of a major identity crisis. His birth mother contacts him: She's left her husband, dropped into San Francisco—from Indiana—to sell her handmade earrings and wants to meet him.

This bare-bones situation, which might initially sound like a TV movie of the week, provides the framework for Swimming Across the Hudson, a first novel by Joshua Henkin that's winning praise for its complexity, gentle humor and sincerity.

For Ben, whose quiet unease about his origins has been an undercurrent in his life, his birth mother's unexpected appearance only raises more questions—about his relationship with his adopted...