BookBrowse Reviews Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Taffy Brodesser-Akner's second novel, Long Island Compromise, is centered around the Fletchers, a wealthy Jewish American family navigating their lives years after Carl Fletcher, the patriarch and one of the richest men in his suburb, was kidnapped. On Wednesday, March 12, 1980, as Carl was in his driveway leaving for work, he was taken, brutalized, and held for a ransom of $250,000, which we are told was the third all-time highest domestic ransom. This shook not only the family but the town of Middle Rock, a wealthy, preternaturally safe suburb in Long Island. "The Fletchers were not just rich, but extraordinarily, absurdly, kidnappably rich," the narrator explains, and they could pay the ransom less than a week later. Upon Carl's return, they believed their troubles were over. But decades later we see how their wealth has failed to protect them from the multitude of ways trauma can ...