1983. A kibbutz on the bank of the river Jordan. After a fateful protest march and on the eve of her wedding, a young woman leaves for England, never to return. Decades later, her daughter begins to uncover the devastating reality of her mother's childhood in a social experiment that discarded family life in favour of the collective, but can the truth ever be recovered?


Spanning the years from 1967-2010, Night Swimming in the Jordan dives into what it means to grow up in someone else's utopia, where the threat of war is ever present and relationships are coloured by ideology.




Yaara Lahav Gregory grew up in a Kibbutz in Israel, a socialist farming community on the banks of the river Jordan. After two years of compulsory military service in the Israeli Air Force she moved to Devon in the UK where she still lives. Yaara has spent many years as a teacher of both children and adults. She loves to swim in rivers and in the sea.