Manhattan Beach

by Jennifer Egan

First published 2017

Eleven-year-old Anna Kerrigan watches her father meet with the mysterious Dexter Styles, sensing the charged tension between the two men. Years pass. Her father vanishes, and America enters the war. Anna finds work at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women now fill positions abandoned by men shipped overseas. She pushes to become the yard's first female diver, taking on the most perilous job of repairing warships underwater. When Anna encounters Dexter Styles again at a nightclub, their reunion pulls her into her father's hidden world of gangsters and danger. As she pieces together the truth about his disappearance, Anna navigates between her demanding work as a diver and the criminal underworld that may hold answers about her family's fate. Set against wartime Brooklyn, the story follows Anna's transformation from a curious child into a woman confronting the complex legacy her father left behind.

Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, mystery

Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, suspenseful

Tropes: family-secrets, mystery, second-chance

Setting: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Naval Yard

Period: World War II

438 pages · Hardcover · Scribner

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