A major literary debut, an epic tale of love, failure, and unexpected faith set in New York, Amsterdam, and Las Vegas

The modern-day Jonah at the center of Joshua Max Feldman’s brilliantly conceived retelling of the book of Jonah is a young Manhattan lawyer named Jonah Jacobstein. He’s a lucky man: healthy and handsome, with two beautiful women ready to spend the rest of their lives with him and an enormously successful career that gets more promising by the minute. He’s celebrating a deal that will surely make him partner when a bizarre, unexpected biblical vision at a party changes everything. Hard as he tries to forget what he saw, this disturbing sign is only the first of many Jonah will witness, and before long his life is unrecognizable. Though this perhaps divine intervention will be responsible for more than one irreversible loss in Jonah’s life, it will also cross his path with that of Judith Bulbrook, an intense, breathtakingly intelligent woman who’s no stranger to loss herself. As this funny and bold novel moves to Amsterdam and then Las Vegas, Feldman examines the way we live now while asking an age-old question: How do you know if you’re chosen?

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, February 2014: This novel reads like the literary lovechild of filmmaker Albert "Lost in America" Brooks and author Joshua "Then We Came to the End" Ferris. On the surface, itâ??s a comedy about a smart, successful guy--a young Manhattan lawyer--who, despite his big-deal job and not-one-but-two wonderful women in love with him, canâ??t seem to be happy. So far, so annoying, right? But wait: donâ??t throw the book across the room just yet. The task Feldman has set for himself is to make us understand, even to like, Jonah--and by the time our hero has maneuvered himself out of his glam life (through a half-hearted attempt at corporate whistleblowing), weâ??re rooting for him. And then thereâ??s Judith, Jonahâ??s brainiac counterpart: a young woman orphaned by 9/11, a young woman also seeking solace, albeit in different ways. (Her sections of the novel are so strong you might ask why Feldman didnâ??t name his debut The Book of Judith.) When a chance meeting puts these two lost souls together, they are both forever changed. While itâ??s based very loosely (mercifully) on the biblical story of the same name, and for all that Jonahâ??s and Judithâ??s Jewishness is a factor in the novel, The Book of Jonah is more than a religious parable. Itâ??s a universal, timeless tale of loss and the longing for meaning. --Sara Nelson

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