A lively, inventive tale of Isaac that follows him beyond Genesis into the 21st century.
After being spared from Abraham's blade, he's been granted eternal youth and wanders the earth as a soldier of fortune. Turning up at a coffee shop in Los Angeles, he falls in love with Ruth Canby, a brilliant, breezy academic with a troubled past.
Isaac suspects he was forgotten, "a crumb dropped unnoticed in a kitchen crevice." Perhaps whatever saved him is long gone, leaving him "a puppet without a puppet master, like one of those Japanese soldiers stranded on an island after World War II."
Isaac and Ruth must ultimately confront a sinister, enigmatic phantom that's stalked him for forty centuries. The story makes stops that include the Spanish Inquisition, a luxury box at the Super Bowl, and the infamous cells of the Tombs of New York City. Along the way it takes stock of time and chance, good and evil, faith, forgiveness, God, Satan, and the power of everlasting love.
New York Times best-selling author Ivan Goldman's work has appeared in The Nation, Rolling Stone, Columbia Journalism Review, Utne Reader, The Ring, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Isaac: A Modern Fable is his fourth novel. He and his wife live in Southern California.
I once heard a rabbi say the biblical Isaac story means God instructed us not to sacrifice human beings. If so, there there were a lot easier ways to teach this lesson without terrorizing poor Isaac. Still, it's a rich tale with great dramatic and philosophical underpinnings. I tried to explore some of them in my own way.