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Swap

Sam Moffie
UEL Enterprises (2007)
ISBN 9780978606206
Reviewed by Kam Aures for RebeccasReads (3/08)

“Swap” is the story of Sheldon Marsh, his wife Eleanor, his friend Tom, and Tom’s wife Lucy.  Sheldon who is half-Jewish and hearing impaired was raised solely by his mother.    Now, he and his mother own a bar together in Youngstown, Ohio.  Sheldon’s mother is a major movie trivia buff and relates everything that happens in their lives back to some movie or another. 

As a child Sheldon had a collection of baseball cards, saving the less desirable ones to put in the spokes of his bike tires.  His love of baseball followed him into adulthoodwhere he played in the Major Leagues for a while before being bumped back down to the Minors. 

The inspiration for Moffie’s novel was the true wife-swapping incident between two former New York Yankee players, Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson, in the 1970s.  In the fictional “Swap,” Sheldon is unhappy with his wife and feels that he would be much happier if he traded Eleanor for his friend Tom’s wife Lucy.  

The book consists of four chapters, each devoted to one of the four major characters.  Every character is very well-developed and by the end of the book you will know everything (and I do mean everything!) about each and every one of them.  At the very end of the book, Moffie has pages of “updates” for each character and tells the story of where they are today.  I really enjoyed this part as I am a person who loves those types of updates at the end of movies, particularly those movies based on true stories. 

Although the title of the book is “Swap,” the book really doesn’t go into the details of the actual exchange.  Instead it focuses on each character’s life before the actual swap takes place.  For instance, the chapter detailing Lucy’s story ends with, “It wasn’t too difficult to get Lucy to agree to the swap.”  It would have been interesting to delve a little deeper into everyday life after the exchange occurred throughout the actual novel rather than solely in the Epilogue at the end.

The main focuses in the book are baseball, sex, and movie trivia so if you enjoy reading about any of these topics then this book may be of interest to you.  However, “Swap” is also full of crude humor and language and not for those easily offended.  If you are a fan of Howard Stern, Jerry Springer and the like, you will most likely enjoy this book. 


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