THIS MAGNIFICENT DAPPLED SEA by David Biro (Lake Union Publishing; November 1, 2020) has garnered wonderful advance reviews, including a rave from bestselling author Adriana Trigiani. In the early 1990s, nine-year-old Luca Taviano lives in a small North Italian village where a stubborn cold is subsequently diagnosed as a virulent case of leukemia. His only hope for survival is a bone marrow transplant.

After an exhaustive search, a match turns up three thousand miles away in the form of a most unlikely donor: Joseph Neiman, a rabbi in Brooklyn, New York, who is suffering from a debilitating crisis of faith. Luca's grandmother, Letizia, is surprised to learn of her grandson's Ashkenazi DNA profile, but Luca's young nurse, Nina, is intrigued by the unlikely match and researches his family history, risking her career and racing against time to help save him.

Through the course of her research she uncovers terrible secrets from World War II—secrets that reveal how a Catholic child could have Jewish genes.

THIS MAGNIFICENT DAPPLED SEA was inspired by a true story, and David Biro, a physician who is himself the recipient of a successful bone marrow transplant, explores how two strangers—generations and oceans apart—have a chance to save each other. Can inheritance be transcended by accidents of love? That is the question at the heart of a novel that challenges the idea of identity and celebrates the ties that bind us all together.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

David Biro graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia Medical School, and Oxford University. He teaches at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and practices dermatology in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. He is the author of One Hundred Days: My Journey from Doctor to Patient and The Language of Pain: Finding Words, Compassion, and Relief. He has also been published in the New York Times, Slate, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and various medical journals. David lives in New York City with his wife and twin boys. For more information, visit www.davidbiro.com. 

“David Biro has written a glorious novel about connections over time, through war and displacement, to life affirming twists of fate that change the course of the lives of Luca Taviano, an Italian boy and Joseph Neiman, a rabbi. Grief and love are intertwined in the experience of Italian Jews and this beautiful novel tells that story weaving in and out of time as secrets are revealed and redemption is lost and found. Bravo!” (Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Shoemaker's Wife)

“Gripping…filled with plenty of heart and compassion. Biro’s ambitious dive into the mysteries of family origin will move readers.” (PUBLISHERS WEEKLY)