Kuperman's Fire

Hi-tech entrepreneur Michael Kuperman discovers the illegal sale of chemical weapons abroad by a powerful American corporation. What does he do with this knowledge? Ultimately, the Kuperman family must flee Boston and hide their identity. Dealing with danger changes their life as a family. This is a novel about family. The many ways of being Jews in contemporary American society play themselves out in the tensions within Michael s family, a family at the edge of divorce. Kuperman struggles with his complex heritage as a Jew. He'd like to hide in a sentimental version of his heritage, but becomes aware of its many real strands, including a passion for justice as well as religious faith. All of us are here by a miracle . . . A hundred years ago someone hid or someone fled . . . and his unborn children s children weren t buried in a killing pit, weren t forced into a shower of Zyklon B. Each of us is a precious distillate. Into present time, the story folds moments from the past that have made survival possible Michael Kuperman's ancestors fleeing the Rhine valley eastward into Poland in the fourteenth century; fleeing Poland into Bessarabia in the seventeenth century. And in a direct, literal way the legacy of his grandfather protects him and his family in his immediate danger. Kuperman's Fire explores evil not only monstrous narcissism, indifferent to life but also delight in destruction, a delight that can t be rationally explained. How are we to hold such evil in our minds? How can we cope with it emotionally, spiritually? While Kuperman s Fire celebrates the miracle of our survival, it insists on our responsi??bility to face evil and continue the miracle.