National Bestseller - A New York Times Notable Book
Named Best Book of the Year by Esquire, Times Literary Supplement,
Elle Magazine, LitHub, Publishers Weekly, Financial Times, Guardian,
Refinery29, PopSugar, and Globe and Mail
"A brilliant novel. I am full of admiration." --Philip Roth
"One of America's most important novelists" (New York Times), the
award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The History of
Love, conjures an achingly beautiful and breathtakingly original novel
about personal transformation that interweaves the stories of two
disparate individuals--an older lawyer and a young novelist--whose
transcendental search leads them to the same Israeli desert.
Jules Epstein, a man whose drive, avidity, and outsized personality
have, for sixty-eight years, been a force to be reckoned with, is
undergoing a metamorphosis. 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, he's felt an
irresistible need to give away his possessions, alarming his children
and perplexing the executor of his estate. With the last of his wealth,
he travels to Israel, with a nebulous plan to do something to honor his
parents. In Tel Aviv, he is sidetracked by a charismatic 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
beautiful daughter who convinces Epstein to become involved in her own
project--a film about the life of David being shot in the desert--with
life-changing consequences.
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. Troubled by writer's block
and a failing marriage, she hopes that the hotel can unlock a dimension
of reality--and her own perception of life--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.
Bursting with life and humor, Forest Dark is a profound, mesmerizing
novel of metamorphosis and self-realization--of looking beyond all that
is visible towards the infinite.
