Belief

BELIEF, A NOVEL a contemporary tale, portrays a man whose search for God and whose caregiving infuriates his family and friends. The hero's spiritual and fleshly appetites are closely allied. He feels most connected to life and God during the act of loving and love-making.
The lives of the women for whom he cares-wives, daughters, and lovers -unfold as they try to unravel the mystery that surrounds his initial plight. When the book opens, the hero is in a coma supposedly induced by a drunken fall on the edge of a swimming pool. In this state, he is the subject of a number of legal charges relating to his real-estate business, his abetting the flight of a fugitive Weatherperson, and his sexual activi- ties with underage boys and girls. The hero's lawyer-daughter seeks the true cause of his injury and supposed crimes. The novel proceeds as a mystery story that tracks down the true criminals while revealing the life history of the hero and his family that has placed him at such risk.

BILL BRODER has published seven books of fiction: The Sacred Hoop, Sierra Club Books; Remember This Time, written with his wife, Gloria Kurian Broder, Newmarket Press; Taking Care of Cleo, Hand- sel Books/Other Press; and the following books by The Ainslie Street Project: The Thanksgiving Trilogy, including Crimes of Innocence, Esau’s Mountain, and What Rough Beast?; and Two Russian Bicycles, two novellas, Tolstoy’s Wife and The Sphinx of Kiev. He has published one book of nonfiction: A Prayer for the Departed, The Ainslie Street Project. Broder has also acted as member, executive director, and artistic director of a playwrights’ workshop, California On Stage, and has completed a number of full-length plays, which have received staged readings throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Two of his plays were presented as staged readings at The Second and Third Annual California Studies Conference in Sacramento, California. His play Abalone! was produced in Carmel, California.