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      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

       www.FigTreeBooks.net

      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

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