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Book Summary and Reviews of The Trade Off by Samantha Greene Woodruff

The Trade Off by Samantha Greene Woodruff

The Trade Off

A Novel

by Samantha Greene Woodruff

  • Published:
  • Oct 2024, 383 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A brilliant and ambitious young woman strives to find her place amid the promise and tumult of 1920s Wall Street in a captivating historical novel by the author of The Lobotomist's Wife.

Bea Abramovitz has a gift for math and numbers. With her father, she studies the burgeoning Wall Street market's stocks and patterns in the financial pages. After college she's determined to parlay her talent for the prediction game into personal and professional success. But in the 1920s, in a Lower East Side tenement, opportunities for women don't just come knocking. Bea will have to create them.

It's easier for her golden-boy twin brother, Jake, who longs to reclaim all their parents lost after fleeing the pogroms in Russia to come to America. Well intentioned but undisciplined, Jake has a charm that can carry him only so far on Wall Street. So Bea devises a plan. They'll be a secret team, and she'll be the brains behind the broker. As Jake's reputation, his heedless ego, and the family fortune soar, Bea foresees catastrophe: an impending crash that could destroy everything if she doesn't finally take control.

Inspired by the true story of a pioneering investment legend, The Trade Off is a powerful novel about identity, sacrifice, family loyalties, and the complex morality of money.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
These questions were originally posted on the author's website at https://www.samanthawoodruff.com/bookclub

  1. What was your first impression of Bea Abramovitz? Did that impression change over the course of the novel?
  2. How did the fact that Bea was a twin impact her journey? How did it impact Jake's?
  3. How did her parents' immigration experience impact Bea's relationship to wealth and money? Jake's? How did that evolve throughout the story?
  4. Early in the book, we learn about life on the Lower East Side. Was there anything about Bea's childhood home or life that surprised you?
  5. Discuss the different ways in which the Abramovitz family responded to their shifting financial situation. How did it change each of them ...
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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Bea Abramovitz is my kind of heroine: undaunted, full of grit, and savvy, with the temerity to stare down a barrier and then work her hardest until she's found a way to break through it. Told with meticulous insight and the colorful language of the city streets, this is a thoughtful and eerily relevant examination of what it means to be a woman with big and bold yearnings." ―Allison Pataki, New York Times bestselling author of Finding Margaret Fuller

"Readers of Beatriz Williams and Fiona Davis will devour this original and inspiring story of female empowerment, vividly set against the looming shadow of the Great Depression." ―Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of Code Name Sapphire

"A profound look at sibling and family loyalties, capitalism, anti-Semitism, and sexism. My adrenaline ramped up just like it does before the closing bell. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough despite not wanting Woodruff's story to end." ―Renée Rosen, USA Today bestselling author of Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl

This information about The Trade Off was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Samantha Greene Woodruff

Samantha Greene Woodruff is the author of Amazon #1 bestseller The Lobotomist's Wife. She studied history at Wesleyan University and continued her studies at NYU's Stern School of Business, where she earned an MBA. Sam spent nearly two decades working on the business side of media, primarily at Viacom's Nickelodeon, before leaving corporate life to become a full-time mom. In her newfound "free" time, she took classes at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, where she accidentally found her calling as a historical fiction author. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, Writer's Digest, Female First, Read 650, and more. Though she grew up in the New Jersey suburbs, Sam now lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, with her husband and two children, their two dogs, and a small reptile zoo. When not writing, Sam practices yoga, hikes, and occasionally indulges her love of singing with mandatory family karaoke nights. For more information, visit www.samanthawoodruff.com.

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