Pastoral americana

Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the post-war years, marries a former Miss New Jersey, inherits his father's glove factory, and moves into a stone house in the idyllic town of Old Rimrock. Until one fine day in 1968 in Swede, the American luck that had smiled on him until then leaves him. Merry, his beloved daughter, has grown up. She used to be an adorable, awake little girl. Now she has become a spoiled, fanatical teenager capable of carrying out an extravagant act of political terrorism. Overnight, Swede is separated from the American pastoral and thrown into idiosyncratic American madness.