Alligators May Be Present: A Novel

by Andrew Furman

While many Jews have picked Florida as the perfect place to retire, Matt Glassman has chosen it as the place to begin his adulthood. Perhaps that's because the pressures of life have always reminded him about his grandfather who mysteriously disappeared from the family twenty years ago. Now, while he tries to begin a family of his own, he also builds a relationship with the one person who might know the truth about his grandfather?s disappearance: his grandmother. She's remained stubbornly reticent on the topic all these years, but when a familiar old man shows up at Glassman's office he thinks he may finally get some answers.

276 pages, Hardcover

First published March 2, 2005

About the author

Andrew Furman is a professor of English at Florida Atlantic University and teaches in its MFA program in creative writing. His fiction and creative nonfiction frequently engage with the Florida outdoors, but he has also written about Jewish identity, basketball, lighthouses, swimming, and cast iron cookware. His essays and stories have appeared in such publications as Prairie Schooner, Oxford American, The Southern Review, Santa Monica Review, Ecotone, Willow Springs, Southern Indiana Review, Grist, Poets & Writers, Terrain.org, Flyway, and The Florida Review. He is the author, most recently, of the novels Jewfish (Little Curlew Press, 2020) and Goldens Are Here (Green Writers Press, 2018), and the memoir Bitten: My Unexpected Love Affair with Florida (University Press of Florida, 2014), which was named a finalist for the ASLE Environmental Book Award. His novel, The World That We Are, will be released by Regal House Publishing in 2025. He lives in south Florida with his family.

Reviews

[Christopher Pumphrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glassman's narrative swagger is compelling. "Alligators" ARE present!

[Lana · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book gave me a feeling of family. we should not take our family for granted. the elderly of our family are very important. the family can help us through tough times, we have to learn to rely on them and also give them our support. History is what makes our family what it is and that is important throughout our lives. we will lose loved ones, that is part of life. but we can enjoy them while they are here and learn from their experiences.