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By the Rivers of Babylon
On a sultry South Carolina island, sunlight teases out the darkest secrets of the heart, in this novel from the author of An Undisturbed Peace.
Joe and Abigail Becker, a Jewish couple from Boston, have inherited a house on Sweetgrass Island in South Carolina's Lowcountry. Though they feel like fish out of water, the couple is excited to give the South a try--and maybe even find it a place to finally call home.
Their Boston friends are convinced they won't last the summer. But the South works its magic on the Beckers, holding them fast to misty marsh, farmlands, and grand oaks, the sweet twang of banjos and the blues. Even the locals have put aside their usual mistrust of transplants. Joe is convinced that has more to do with Abigail's beauty than with his dubious charms--especially in the case of Billy Euston. A celebrated pit master and womanizer, Billy is transfixed with Abigail at first sight. And though Joe is used to his lovely wife's effect on men, he misjudges their playful flirtations--a tragic mistake that will tear through the island like a hurricane, leaving the broken and the battered in its wake . . .
Praise for Mary Glickman
"Mary Glickman is a wonder." --Pat Conroy, New York Times-bestselling author of Prince of Tides
"Mary Glickman gives us a nuanced image of our twentieth-century selves, our society woven into stunning art." --Carolivia Herron, author of Nappy Hair and Thereafter Johnnie
"Religion isn't the only thing that stirs Glickman to she writes in a high-drama, no-holds-barred style when it comes to romance . . . [An] entertaining novel about sins of the flesh and the redemptive power of belief." --Publishers Weekly on Marching to Zion
Joe and Abigail Becker, a Jewish couple from Boston, have inherited a house on Sweetgrass Island in South Carolina's Lowcountry. Though they feel like fish out of water, the couple is excited to give the South a try--and maybe even find it a place to finally call home.
Their Boston friends are convinced they won't last the summer. But the South works its magic on the Beckers, holding them fast to misty marsh, farmlands, and grand oaks, the sweet twang of banjos and the blues. Even the locals have put aside their usual mistrust of transplants. Joe is convinced that has more to do with Abigail's beauty than with his dubious charms--especially in the case of Billy Euston. A celebrated pit master and womanizer, Billy is transfixed with Abigail at first sight. And though Joe is used to his lovely wife's effect on men, he misjudges their playful flirtations--a tragic mistake that will tear through the island like a hurricane, leaving the broken and the battered in its wake . . .
Praise for Mary Glickman
"Mary Glickman is a wonder." --Pat Conroy, New York Times-bestselling author of Prince of Tides
"Mary Glickman gives us a nuanced image of our twentieth-century selves, our society woven into stunning art." --Carolivia Herron, author of Nappy Hair and Thereafter Johnnie
"Religion isn't the only thing that stirs Glickman to she writes in a high-drama, no-holds-barred style when it comes to romance . . . [An] entertaining novel about sins of the flesh and the redemptive power of belief." --Publishers Weekly on Marching to Zion
- GenresFiction
360 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 7, 2023
15 people are currently reading
282 people want to read
About the author
Mary Glickman
9 books111 followersBorn Mary Kowalski on the south shore of Boston, Massachusetts, Mary Glickman grew up the fourth of seven children in a traditional Irish-Polish Catholic family. Her father had been a pilot in the Army Air Force and later flew for Delta Air Lines. From an early age, Mary was fascinated by faith. Though she attended Catholic school and as a child wanted to become a nun, her attention eventually turned to the Old Testament and she began what would become a lifelong relationship with Jewish culture. “Joseph Campbell said that religion is the poetry that speaks to a man’s soul,” Mary has said, “and Judaism was my soul’s symphony.”
In her twenties, Mary traveled in Europe and explored her passion for writing, composing short stories and poetry. Returning to the United States, she met her future husband, Stephen, a lawyer, and with his encouragement began to consider writing as a career. She enrolled in the Masters in Creative Writing program at Boston University, under the poet George Starbuck, who encouraged her to focus on fiction writing. While taking an MFA class with the late Ivan Gold, Mary completed her first novel, Drones, which received a finalist award from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities but was never published.
Mary also began a career as a freelance writer working with nonprofit organizations on projects ranging from a fund-raising campaign for the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center to an instructional video for the National Scoliosis Foundation’s screening project. Mary and Stephen married in 1978. Mary made a full conversion to Judaism and later worked as treasurer/secretary for her synagogue.
The origins of her love for all things Southern arose from a sabbatical year. In 1987, Mary and Stephen first traveled to the south of Spain, soaking in the life of a fishing village called La Cala. After seven months abroad and, hoping to extend their time away, they sought a warm—and more affordable—locale. The romance of Charleston, South Carolina, its Spanish moss, antebellum architecture, and rich cultural life beckoned.
Settling into a rented house on Seabrook Island, Mary fell in love with the people, language, and rural beauty of her new home. Following a lifelong desire to ride horses, Mary took a position mucking the stalls at the local equestrian center and embraced riding, finding her match in an Appaloosa named King of Harts. The sabbatical ended and the couple returned to life in Boston, but the passion for Southern culture remained with them. They were able to return permanently to Seabrook Island in 2008, where they currently reside with their cats and an elderly King of Harts.
In her twenties, Mary traveled in Europe and explored her passion for writing, composing short stories and poetry. Returning to the United States, she met her future husband, Stephen, a lawyer, and with his encouragement began to consider writing as a career. She enrolled in the Masters in Creative Writing program at Boston University, under the poet George Starbuck, who encouraged her to focus on fiction writing. While taking an MFA class with the late Ivan Gold, Mary completed her first novel, Drones, which received a finalist award from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities but was never published.
Mary also began a career as a freelance writer working with nonprofit organizations on projects ranging from a fund-raising campaign for the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center to an instructional video for the National Scoliosis Foundation’s screening project. Mary and Stephen married in 1978. Mary made a full conversion to Judaism and later worked as treasurer/secretary for her synagogue.
The origins of her love for all things Southern arose from a sabbatical year. In 1987, Mary and Stephen first traveled to the south of Spain, soaking in the life of a fishing village called La Cala. After seven months abroad and, hoping to extend their time away, they sought a warm—and more affordable—locale. The romance of Charleston, South Carolina, its Spanish moss, antebellum architecture, and rich cultural life beckoned.
Settling into a rented house on Seabrook Island, Mary fell in love with the people, language, and rural beauty of her new home. Following a lifelong desire to ride horses, Mary took a position mucking the stalls at the local equestrian center and embraced riding, finding her match in an Appaloosa named King of Harts. The sabbatical ended and the couple returned to life in Boston, but the passion for Southern culture remained with them. They were able to return permanently to Seabrook Island in 2008, where they currently reside with their cats and an elderly King of Harts.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 15, 2025
I admit; this one was kinda disappointing. It turned into another genre halfway through and I don’t think it did well by its main female character.
Admittedly, for some reason I’ve forgotten, I went into the book assuming it was historical fiction about Jews moving to a Georgia location (an island called Sweetgrass) in the 1950s. But nope! It was far closer to the current day…though the location is remote enough that Jews are rare.
Still, Joe and Abigail acquire a house from a relative and move in from Boston. “They”—meaning Abgail—immediately catches the eye of the local ladies man, Billy. This isn’t really new for her; she has the type of beauty that draws men in. But for reasons difficult to decipher, she actually responds to Billy.
Subplots in the background include Billy’s long-term relationship with Ella. The racial commentary isn’t as pronounced as one might assume, but Billy is white and Ella is Black. Her son, Big George, was a police officer who lost his partner and sustained a serious head injury during an altercation. When he meets Joe and Abigail he starts spouting vicious antisemitic conspiracy theories. Other characters assume this kind of hate can’t be rationalized away, though apparently it can in Big George’s case. He and Joe get close in the second half of the book and start playing detective.
So, Abigail is having an affair with Billy, Joe suspects something is up, and things culminate dramatically at a Passover dinner where they invite everyone into their home. Glickman starts playing with time after that where it feels like, in the blink of an eye, Abigail and Billy are living together, growing more distant and toxic and addicted to drugs. Then suddenly Billy is dead and Abigail is the main suspect. At least and especially according to Big George and Joe who, let’s face it, have their own axes to grind.
I appreciated all of the characterization on display except for Abigail’s. And I’m not alone there. “Glickman makes Billy’s character more complex than any other,” Nina Schneider writes in the Jewish Book Council review. “In fact, the least developed character seems to be Abigail, whose main attribute is her beauty; she’s constantly viewed through Billy’s gaze.” Aimee Jodoin calls her “ego-driven” in the Foreword review, and the end of the book is obviously about Joe ridding himself of this albatross once and for all so that he can finally call Sweetgrass his home. (No longer Babylon to this Jew! Babylon referring to the first diaspora from ancient Judah and Israel.)
Glickman herself hails from a Sweetgrass-type island, so this is obviously personal to her. There’s something a little more intimate at play here than I remember from her earlier novel, ONE MORE RIVER. But the Abigail thing really irks me. At least Glickman showed more grace to her other main female character, Ella, and her complicated history with Billy and other men.
I suppose I’m also surprised Big George’s conspiracy-driven antisemitism wasn’t a bigger deal, though perhaps I should be glad we eschewed that melodrama. It also seems obvious to me that Big George dragged Joe into this detective scheme with him because he was keen to pick up a semblance of his old career. But Big George was never a main character, and this subplot didn’t do much for his interiority. It also wasn’t a traditional mystery/suspense subplot, either, which Schneider called “jarring.”
Still, for the characters she cared about, Glickman was able to offer some closure, I guess. Plus the setting was very evocative. Judaism was scant, but we got an idea for differences between what’s available in the north vs the south and how cultural Jews like Joe and Abigail would fit things in. Maybe I’d rate higher if it weren’t for the genre switch and Abigail’s treatment. But meh.
Admittedly, for some reason I’ve forgotten, I went into the book assuming it was historical fiction about Jews moving to a Georgia location (an island called Sweetgrass) in the 1950s. But nope! It was far closer to the current day…though the location is remote enough that Jews are rare.
Still, Joe and Abigail acquire a house from a relative and move in from Boston. “They”—meaning Abgail—immediately catches the eye of the local ladies man, Billy. This isn’t really new for her; she has the type of beauty that draws men in. But for reasons difficult to decipher, she actually responds to Billy.
Subplots in the background include Billy’s long-term relationship with Ella. The racial commentary isn’t as pronounced as one might assume, but Billy is white and Ella is Black. Her son, Big George, was a police officer who lost his partner and sustained a serious head injury during an altercation. When he meets Joe and Abigail he starts spouting vicious antisemitic conspiracy theories. Other characters assume this kind of hate can’t be rationalized away, though apparently it can in Big George’s case. He and Joe get close in the second half of the book and start playing detective.
So, Abigail is having an affair with Billy, Joe suspects something is up, and things culminate dramatically at a Passover dinner where they invite everyone into their home. Glickman starts playing with time after that where it feels like, in the blink of an eye, Abigail and Billy are living together, growing more distant and toxic and addicted to drugs. Then suddenly Billy is dead and Abigail is the main suspect. At least and especially according to Big George and Joe who, let’s face it, have their own axes to grind.
I appreciated all of the characterization on display except for Abigail’s. And I’m not alone there. “Glickman makes Billy’s character more complex than any other,” Nina Schneider writes in the Jewish Book Council review. “In fact, the least developed character seems to be Abigail, whose main attribute is her beauty; she’s constantly viewed through Billy’s gaze.” Aimee Jodoin calls her “ego-driven” in the Foreword review, and the end of the book is obviously about Joe ridding himself of this albatross once and for all so that he can finally call Sweetgrass his home. (No longer Babylon to this Jew! Babylon referring to the first diaspora from ancient Judah and Israel.)
Glickman herself hails from a Sweetgrass-type island, so this is obviously personal to her. There’s something a little more intimate at play here than I remember from her earlier novel, ONE MORE RIVER. But the Abigail thing really irks me. At least Glickman showed more grace to her other main female character, Ella, and her complicated history with Billy and other men.
I suppose I’m also surprised Big George’s conspiracy-driven antisemitism wasn’t a bigger deal, though perhaps I should be glad we eschewed that melodrama. It also seems obvious to me that Big George dragged Joe into this detective scheme with him because he was keen to pick up a semblance of his old career. But Big George was never a main character, and this subplot didn’t do much for his interiority. It also wasn’t a traditional mystery/suspense subplot, either, which Schneider called “jarring.”
Still, for the characters she cared about, Glickman was able to offer some closure, I guess. Plus the setting was very evocative. Judaism was scant, but we got an idea for differences between what’s available in the north vs the south and how cultural Jews like Joe and Abigail would fit things in. Maybe I’d rate higher if it weren’t for the genre switch and Abigail’s treatment. But meh.
May 5, 2023
This book is a Edith Wharton/Dennis Lehane hybrid that kept me guessing & shocked the sh*t out of me when the twists and explosive events suddenly happening. I was not expecting any of it. I enjoyed this book immensely, not only is it well written, the characters well crafted and the story well delivered but there is wisdom, depth and intrigue in each page and chapter. Such an unexpectedly excellent read.
November 15, 2025
In this beautifully layered novel, Mary Glickman crafts a world where the scenery itself feels alive. Sweetgrass Island becomes a character in its own right, welcoming and unsettling the transplanted Boston couple who dare to call it home. Joe and Abigail Becker’s wish to reinvent their lives is both touching and precarious, especially as island life, with its charm, complexity, and unspoken rules, begins to reveal their vulnerabilities.
March 6, 2023
the wait was worth it
I have enjoyed all of Mary Glickman’s novels. Her latest was a great read. I could visualize all of the characters and their hardships and their accomplishments. This book would make a great movie.
I have enjoyed all of Mary Glickman’s novels. Her latest was a great read. I could visualize all of the characters and their hardships and their accomplishments. This book would make a great movie.
October 29, 2022
Mary's writing shines in this new story. Her admiration and complicated relationship with the South are on bold display in this engrossing story. I could not put it down.
March 21, 2023
Absolutely loved this!
July 13, 2023
Wonderful contemporary love story and mystery set in a small island community off the coast of South Carolina...deep south and deep passions. Riveting read!
February 6, 2024
Islands are special places of beauty, isolation and secrets. Having lived on one of the San Juan islands in the Pacific Northwest, I was drawn to Mary Glickman’s island setting in her novel By the Rivers of Babylon.
As any islander will tell you, coming home from the mainland is an occasion to be celebrated. It begins at the dock with the screech of gulls and the salty sea breezes. Neighbors greet neighbors, shouting courtesies and exchanging chit-chat about this other world of mainlanders they’ve been to, of noise and pollution, confusion and too many people.
I was delighted to be invited into Mary Glickman’s novel from the ferry dock of Sweetgrass Island in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. The plot is an archetypal story of outsiders making their way in a new world. In Glickman’s story, the young couple protagonists aren’t mere Yanks from Boston; they’re Jews invading a clannish southern island community of Blacks and whites whose families go back for generations.
But soon a promising plot goes sideways. The husband is a nebbish, the beautiful wife is a hussy, the island’s welcome ambassador is a philandering, drug peddling sleaze.
Not every novel needs to address profound issues. Southern and Romance writings have their own conventions, but genre literature does not preclude quality of craft. Glickman’s novel introduces issues of race and then dismisses them quite cavalierly. There is no reach to fulfill the edict of the novel’s title, no reach for truth or honor or wisdom or understanding. And so, By the Rivers of Babylon sinks in the mud of infidelity, mendacity, and an implausible murder twist and turns the mandates of Psalm 137 into a farce.
The South Carolina Lowcountry was settled by white Europeans who built their rice plantations with African slave labor, mostly peoples of the Gullah Geechee tribes. Can the reader really accept a story where a history of racial violence and abuse of Blacks and Jews by whites, worthy of serious discussion, is dismissed as minor, where the races now mingle happily at the local watering hole or at a hurricane party? And as a non-resident I ask myself if the idyllic setting depicted in this novel is the same South Carolina we read about in the daily news.
A mere eight years before Glickman published her novel, the Confederate flag still flew high and proud above the State Capitol building. That was also the year when a white supremacist murdered nine Blacks during Bible study at the Mother Emmanual Church, a historic Black church in the Lowcountry of Charleston. Last year, the state allowed parents to challenge teachings of white privilege in public institutions, an anti Critical Race Theory measure.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is currently tracking thirty groups of neo-Nazis, antisemites, neo-Confederates, white nationalists and anti-government hate groups in South Carolina. Some of them are the Dixie Republic, the John Birch Society, Fight White Genocide, and the Constitution Party. Moms For Liberty is an anti-government group active state-wide including in the Lowcountry regions of Charleston, Colleton and Dorchester counties.
So, the question remains: Does this island of racial harmony only exist in the author’s imagination?
Glickman is a gifted writer. Her talent and skill have won her awards and honors—hard-won accolades as any author can tell you. I’m certain she won’t let those gifts go to waste but use them in a future effort and return her attention to matters worthy of her craft, to remember to “…sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.”
As any islander will tell you, coming home from the mainland is an occasion to be celebrated. It begins at the dock with the screech of gulls and the salty sea breezes. Neighbors greet neighbors, shouting courtesies and exchanging chit-chat about this other world of mainlanders they’ve been to, of noise and pollution, confusion and too many people.
I was delighted to be invited into Mary Glickman’s novel from the ferry dock of Sweetgrass Island in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. The plot is an archetypal story of outsiders making their way in a new world. In Glickman’s story, the young couple protagonists aren’t mere Yanks from Boston; they’re Jews invading a clannish southern island community of Blacks and whites whose families go back for generations.
But soon a promising plot goes sideways. The husband is a nebbish, the beautiful wife is a hussy, the island’s welcome ambassador is a philandering, drug peddling sleaze.
Not every novel needs to address profound issues. Southern and Romance writings have their own conventions, but genre literature does not preclude quality of craft. Glickman’s novel introduces issues of race and then dismisses them quite cavalierly. There is no reach to fulfill the edict of the novel’s title, no reach for truth or honor or wisdom or understanding. And so, By the Rivers of Babylon sinks in the mud of infidelity, mendacity, and an implausible murder twist and turns the mandates of Psalm 137 into a farce.
The South Carolina Lowcountry was settled by white Europeans who built their rice plantations with African slave labor, mostly peoples of the Gullah Geechee tribes. Can the reader really accept a story where a history of racial violence and abuse of Blacks and Jews by whites, worthy of serious discussion, is dismissed as minor, where the races now mingle happily at the local watering hole or at a hurricane party? And as a non-resident I ask myself if the idyllic setting depicted in this novel is the same South Carolina we read about in the daily news.
A mere eight years before Glickman published her novel, the Confederate flag still flew high and proud above the State Capitol building. That was also the year when a white supremacist murdered nine Blacks during Bible study at the Mother Emmanual Church, a historic Black church in the Lowcountry of Charleston. Last year, the state allowed parents to challenge teachings of white privilege in public institutions, an anti Critical Race Theory measure.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is currently tracking thirty groups of neo-Nazis, antisemites, neo-Confederates, white nationalists and anti-government hate groups in South Carolina. Some of them are the Dixie Republic, the John Birch Society, Fight White Genocide, and the Constitution Party. Moms For Liberty is an anti-government group active state-wide including in the Lowcountry regions of Charleston, Colleton and Dorchester counties.
So, the question remains: Does this island of racial harmony only exist in the author’s imagination?
Glickman is a gifted writer. Her talent and skill have won her awards and honors—hard-won accolades as any author can tell you. I’m certain she won’t let those gifts go to waste but use them in a future effort and return her attention to matters worthy of her craft, to remember to “…sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.”
February 6, 2023
Congratulations to my friend Mary Glickman on the release of her latest novel. My #bookreview is on my blog here. https://tcl-bookreviews.com/2023/02/0...
April 18, 2023
I found no substance to the characters in this book or logic to the plot.
July 19, 2025
Briefly met Mary Glickman and her husband at Tommy Condon's in downtown Charleston, SC in February 2023. Only picked this book because of meeting her and it did NOT disappoint!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews