Fight Night is a novel about family, albeit not a traditional one. Swiv has become an adult far before her time, while Mom and Grandma have endured the deaths of family members and the repression endemic to the community in which they once lived. Nevertheless, the novel is also rife with humor and resilience; its tone is more joyous than somber thanks to Swiv’s unique voice and Grandma’s irrepressible sense of humor. It is also the story of how a family damaged by tragedy manages to move on. While the novel recounts many traumatic stories—Grandma’s experience at the hands of Willit Braun, Mom’s suffering at the movie shoot in Albania, and Dad’s excessive drinking and subsequent disappearance—it ends in triumph, rebirth, and regeneration.

Swiv herself, in recording the family’s story, represents not the end of a legacy but the emergence of a new one. Neither Mom nor Grandma have inscribed their histories; it is Swiv who wants to record their experiences. She writes the book as a letter to her absent father—a distressing fact of the young girl’s life—without any knowledge of where he is or if he will ever return.