Goyhood

Funny, poignant, and revelatory while plumbing the emotional depths of the relationship between estranged brothers, Goyhood examines what happens when one becomes unmoored from a comfortable, spiritual existence and must decide whether coincidence is in fact destiny.

When Mayer (née Marty) Belkin fled small town Georgia for Brooklyn nearly thirty years ago, he thought he’d left his wasted youth behind. Now he’s a Talmud scholar married into one of the greatest rabbinical families in the world - a dirt poor country boy reinvented in the image of God.

But his mother’s untimely death brings a shocking revelation: Mayer and his ne’er-do-well twin brother David aren’t, in fact, Jewish. Traumatized and spiritually bereft, Mayer’s only recourse is to convert to Judaism. But the earliest date he can get is a week from now. What are two estranged brothers to do in the interim?

So begins the Belkins’ Rumspringa through America’s Deep South with Mom’s ashes in tow, plus two tagalongs: an insightful Instagram influencer named Charlayne Valentine and Popeye, a one-eyed dog. As the crew gets tangled up in a series of increasingly surreal adventures, Mayer grapples with a God who betrayed him and an emotionally withdrawn wife in Brooklyn who has yet to learn her husband is a counterfeit Jew.

Reuven Fenton has been covering breaking news for the New York Post since 2007, and has earned national recognition for his exclusive reporting on a myriad of national stories. He is a graduate of Columbia University School of Journalism, and lives on Long Island with his wife and two sons. Goyhood is his debut novel.