Jennifer Egan won the National Book Foundation Award for fiction in 2017 for writing Manhattan Beach. The story starts out with with 11 year old Anna Kerrigan going to visit a gangster, Dexter Stiles, with her father, Eddie in 1934. Eddie worked in vaudeville when he was young. He later became a stockbroker but lost everything during the Depression. Eddie needs money to pay for a wheelchair for his younger daughter, Lydia. When Anna is 16 her father disappears. Anna supports her mother and her sister by working in the Navy Yard. At first her job is to measure small parts with a micrometer. Anna hears about people employed to dive in the Navy yard and she is very interested. Despite the efforts of the man in charge of the divers to thwart her, she passes the diving test which includes wearing 200 pounds of equipment and untying a knot underwater. I loved reading about Anna Kerrigan and her life in New York. This is a really good historical book.
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