As a child, Ben Suskind wonders how his family came together. What if he hadn't been adopted by Orhodox Jews? What if his brother, Jonathan, had been adopted by a different couple? Now Ben is thirty years old, living in San Francisco with his girlfriend, Jenny, and her daughter, when he receives a letter from a woman claiming to be his birth mother. He tells his adoptive parents about the letter and they fly him home to New York and reveal a secret about his past, one that turns Ben's whole world upside down.

Without telling anyone, Ben embarks on a journey, risking his relationship with everyone—his girlfriend, his brother, his parents. He combs through the records of his family's past, trying to find the facts about who he and Jonathan really are, and in the process learns the price of lies people tell in the name of truth and good intentions.

Narrated with relentless honest and gentle wit, Swimming Across the Hudson is a moving tale about faith and sexuality, about the communities we're born into and the ones we choose, about the ties that bind us even closer than blood.