The Fire in the Rock

A TALE YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD It's a story that has become legend. The burning bush. The plagues on Egypt. The parting of the Red Sea. The Ten Commandments. But before he was Moses, he was Kisil -- a wanderer, an almost-ordinary man, both doubting and driven. And before she was the wife of a prophet, she was Tzipporah -- the fierce, faithful woman who lent her wisdom and courage when his faltered. This is not a story of miracles and wonders. This is the story of a man and a woman -- and of the love that brought them together and sustained them as they defied a king, freed a people, and changed the world. --- My book is the first attempt, in a work of fiction, to address the facts that are now known about a cataclysmic volcanic eruption that took place in the eastern Med at about the time of the Exodus. The Fire in the Rock is an attempt to tell this story as it might really have happened -- with no "miracles," only natural, if unusual, events; and, perhaps more to the point, God does not appear. He remains "offstage," so to speak, present and active only in the hopes -- and doubts -- of the people of that time, as He is in our own. Since the book generally pleases neither the conservative religious nor the secular atheist, it has not yet found an audience; even so, I am certain that one day it will. All that said, this book is by no means a dry theological treatise Indeed, it is more a love story than anything else; an intimate look at Moses the man, as known by the narrator -- his lover, wife and widow, Tzipporah. We see Moses (whose name was not Moses) as he very likely was, if there was such a man; a lifelong wanderer, haunted by guilt and riven by doubts, a man without a home and without a people. Even though he is not entirely convinced of the existence -- or even of the importance -- of any God, he is still driven by a passionate devotion to the Good, the True, the Just -- and ultimately, by his love for Tzipporah herself, and for their family. The novel is an attempt to tell the story of these "Bible characters" as actual, real people, and neither icons, nor superheroes, nor cartoons. After receiving a starred review, The Fire in the Rock was named to Kirkus Reviews' list of the Best Books of 2016.