A mother recovering from an abortion in a Borscht Belt rental. An eccentric aging landlord, haunted by a mysterious death. A grief-stricken Hasid. A scheming real estate agent looking for her break, her dogged daughter longing for her way out (specifically, a career as a human mermaid), and her addict boyfriend mired in it.

These lives—strangers, neighbors, family, friends—entwine and separate over the course of one fevered upstate summer, in a haunting and hilarious debut novel by acclaimed author Sara Lippmann. In her inimitable prose, she mercilessly explores the predatory side of human nature through conflicts of faith, trauma, desire, belonging, and longing—the particulars of Judaism and feminism, parenting and partying, small-town life and big blundering dreams, as well as the timeless question: How do we carry on?

“What an extraordinary, razor-sharp, utterly original and gripping voice. Sara Lippmann's Lech is at once a painstakingly drawn exploration of claustrophobia, exploitation, predation, and place, and a primal howl of rage let loose in the wind. Told in unflinching prose and with searing poetic intensity, Lech burns with all the fury and tenderness of an open wound.” – Catherine Chung, author of The Tenth Muse

"Lippmann's amiable writing makes for great company." – Publishers Weekly

“A funny, brutal, symphonic novel from a writer with intensity and authority to spare. The world of LECH is as vivid, as wild, and as shockingly familiar as life itself, but way more interesting and way better told.” – Elisa Albert, author of After Birth

"Lech is the ambitious debut novel of an excellent new prose stylist." – The Millions

“Lech takes place over a single summer in the Catskills, but it’s far bigger than that. Sara Lippmann is finely attuned to the cultural, political, and religious tensions that arise between the vacationers and the locals, between the haves and the have-nots. And, wow, those sentences! Lippmann writes like a dream.” – Joshua Henkin, author of Morningside Heights

"Lech is a bleak and brutal novel that sifts through the tragedy-stricken lives of Upstate New Yorkers." – Foreword Reviews

“Sara Lippmann's novel Lech is quilted together with loose stitching, holding the sensual with the grotesque, the intimate with the alienated, the paratactic with the full, and on and on. It is masterfully composed.” – Seth Rogoff, author of Thin Rising Vapors

"For the right reader, this jigsaw puzzle of a novel will be a pleasure." – Kirkus Reviews

“Sara Lippmann's Lech is a superb Jewish gothic, an expertly pitched polyvocal tale of family, loss, and redemption. By turns funny, beautiful, lewd and heartbreaking, Lippmann delivers a literary performance with all the timing and energy of a great Borscht Belt comic.” – Adam O’Fallon Price, author of The Hotel Neversink