Mr. Wizard: A Novel

"The writing is knowing and engaging, wise about its cultural orientations, and driven to discoveries both reassuring and life-enhancing."-Michael Curtis, Fiction Editor Emeritus, The Atlantic

"Jeff Wallach is a prodigiously gifted writer-insightful, funny, and always surprising. Mr. Wizard twists and turns like a double helix. When you finish, you'll want to go back to the very first page and experience it all over again, just to see how Wallach pulled it off."

Two brothers. One mother. One big question.

Two days before her death, Jenny Elliot suggests to her fifty-year-old son Phillip that, being half Irish, he should be more careful about his drinking. Phillip, along with his brother Spencer, has grown up believing they were the fully Jewish-American offspring of Jenny and her late husband who died in the Vietnam War. Was his mother uttering some dementia-inspired fantasy, or was her true character shining through in her last moments to leave the brothers a clue to their real heritage? After her death, Phillip decides to take a DNA test.

The brothers set off on a genetic treasure hunt in search of who they really are-and what that might mean. Are they purely products of their genetics; or were they formed more completely by their social interactions and upbringing? Are they merely victims of randomness; or are they some combination of those factors? And who, exactly, is Mr. Wizard?