Professor Norman Rosenfeld, a cultural historian at a small Canadian university, has almost finished his new and controversial book about Israel and the Jewish people. Then, he learns that his daughter, on a one-year study program at an Israeli university, has been injured in a terrorist attack. Rosenfeld, a widower, rushes to Israel, along with his father, an elderly Holocaust survivor, named "Lucky". While in Israel visiting his injured daughter, at the height of the "Second Intifada", Rosenfeld, an Orthodox Jew, meets and falls in love with a secular Israeli woman.
Chapters of the Professor's book on Israel and the Jewish people are interspersed among the events of the novel. The dramatic events and difficulties of Rosenfeld's life mirror catastrophic events in the life of the Jewish people. His journey to overcome these catastrophes is at the core of The Second Catastrophe.
"The Second Catastrophe ... effectively merges contemporary historical writing and narrative fiction in a creative and compelling manner ... No-one who reads The Second Catastrophe can leave unaffected or uninformed" - Professor Dennis Stoutenburg
Howard Rotberg is a Canadian author who has written mainly for newspapers and magazines. He has degrees in both History and Law from the University of Toronto.
Mantua Books, a publisher in Toronto, Canada, is pleased to publish The Second Catastrophe as the first volume in its New Judaica series.