A Hole in the Water

"A Hole in the Water" is the journey of Jon Pilgrim, an attorney caught in a web spun by a money laundering diamond dealer client and the FBI agent investigating the case. Pilgrim discovers his greed has immersed him deeper in criminal activity than he can handle, has cost him his family, and that his client mysteriously knows more than he, himself, about his own history.

A seemingly simple burglary takes Pilgrim from his apparently Catholic background, through mystical Judaism, Islam, and Shabbetaianism (an obscure Seventeenth Century sect), and through the Holocaust concentration camps to the Israeli secret services. Beginning in New York's diamond district, his 'trials' continue through the federal court system, to the London insurance market, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and the former Jewish enclaves of Mogador, Salonika and Toledo.

On the bones of this legal thriller hangs the flesh of a man's dark and desperate voyage of self-discovery, undertaken in part via Kabbalist lore and metaphor. The title is a Greek proverb describing the futility of digging in a pool of water, reflecting the folly of moving forward without taking account of the past -- something Pilgrim must learn before he may find peace with himself and his future.