PRAISE FOR THE BOOK OF STONE
“Equal parts thriller and literary epic—a smart, haunting novel that entertains as it apprises. Papernick writes with impressive breadth, in turns crafting the minute details of a psychological profile and dissecting the vast sociopolitical complexities of religious zealotry pushed to its outer limits. The Book of Stone is an important read for our historical moment.”
—SARA NOVIĆ,
author of Girl at War
“Jonathan Papernick’s The Book of Stone is a psychological thriller with a complex soul. In the tradition of writers like Robert Stone and Ian McEwan, Papernick describes the quest to save oneself by redeeming history, and the perilous consequences that arise from confusing the two tasks. It’s a harrowing, distinguished book.”
—STEVE STERN,
author of The Wedding Jester and The Angel of Forgetfulness
“The Book of Stone is many amazing things: a searingly-told father-son story in which profound estrangement is tenuously and dangerously bridged through the intermediaries of books and ideas; a modern family tale that is itself embedded in the never-ending, violent tribal drama of the historical conflict between Jews and Arabs. In all its layered psychological intensity, Jon Papernick’s new novel is riveting.”
—ARYEH LEV STOLLMAN,
author of The Illuminated Soul and The Far Euphrates
“The Book of Stone is going to have everyone on the planet talking. Blisteringly smart, provocative, and passionate, Papernick’s astounding novel layers a complex father-and-son story onto the Jewish-Arab conflict, where fierce loyalties and stunning betrayals are about to detonate. Nothing is as it seems in this divided American world: the political becomes personal, religious faith overrides family, and fear can shatter the possibility of love. An astonishing achievement that’s sure to ignite dialogue—and, as the best works of art do, push us to see the world differently.”
—CAROLINE LEAVITT,
New York Times best-selling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You
“Devastating, gripping, and beautiful. The Book of Stone is about fathers and sons, how the past haunts the present, how trauma transcends generations, and how wrong we can be about those who made us who we are. What will haunt you forever is how Papernick brings you right up to the border of justice and terror and then makes that border disappear. Open this book carefully. You will close it changed.”
—DARA HORN,
award-winning author of The World to Come and A Guide for the Perplexed
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © Jonathan Papernick, 2014
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Fig Tree Books LLC, Bedford, New York
Jacket design by Strick&Williams
Interior design by Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available Upon Request
ISBN 978-1-94149-305-2
Distributed by Publishers Group West
First edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
TO MY DAD,
WHO SAYS I’M A LUCKY BOY.
“. . . how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.”
—WILLIAM FAULKNER, Light in August
CONTENTS
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Acknowledgments
Matthew Stone opened his eyes and looked down onto the street. People in twos and threes moved languidly in the pale yellow haze as if constrained by a barely discernible gauze. A whisper of breeze on his face brought him back into his body, his hard-beating heart. It convulsed in a sudden, discordant two-step that left him gasping for air. The sleeves of his father’s robe hung beyond his wrists and flapped like wings as he leaned over the rusted railing, the street five stories below vertiginous, noisy. A bus roared past, a trail of vapor shimmering in its wake.
Stone pulled the robe tight around him, binding his chin against his chest. He smelled his father’s scent, the sour odor of his tobacco. It was ironic, he knew, that he would seek comfort beneath his father’s robe. After all, the exact article of clothing that had drawn his father away from Stone during the Judge’s lengthy trials was the very same robe that embraced him when the endless empty space around him was too much to bear. As a boy he snuck into the Judge’s closet, awed by his father’s