Forest Dark: A Novel

In the wake of his parents’ deaths, his divorce from his wife of more than thirty years, and his retirement from the New York legal firm where he was a partner, Jules Epstein has felt an overwhelming need to give away everything he owns, alarming his children and perplexing the executor of his estate. With the last of his wealth, he travels to Israel in search of something he can create in memory of his parents. In Tel Aviv, he is sidetracked by an American rabbi planning a reunion for the descendants of King David who insists that Epstein is part of that storied dynastic line. He also meets the rabbi’s daughter, who convinces Epstein to become involved in her film about the life of David being shot in the desert.

But Epstein isn’t the only seeker embarking on a metaphysical journey that dissolves his sense of self, place, and history. Leaving her family in Brooklyn, a young, well-known novelist arrives at the Tel Aviv Hilton, where she has stayed every year since birth. Struggling to begin a new book, and troubled by a failing marriage, she hopes that the hotel can unlock a dimension of reality that has been closed off to her. But when she meets a retired literature professor who proposes a project she can’t turn down, she’s drawn into a mystery that alters her life in ways she could never have imagined.