"My Father Sits in the Dark" is a great story about a boy who always questions why his father is sitting in the dark.In the end he finds out why, and realizes it's a good reason.

This is a so-so novel with some interesting plot elements that reminds me of the soap operas of the 1970's and 1980's. The core of the novel is about a successful business man, Dave Dehn, that attempts to start a housing tract complete with a synagogue/temple catering to Jewish families who agree to raise their children as Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. It's an interesting concept. Here's the catch, Dave plans to build his community right in the middle of a highly anti-Semitic East Coast neighborhood. That neighborhood is in the middle of a small town complete with a town council resistant to change, an exclusive country club, and a nasty "Ol' Boy's" network. Add in a little sex, a murder, a suicide or two, and that's where I get my impression of the novel as an expanded soap opera story.

The novel was a slow starter, but once I got over the initial "hump," it was all down hill and I enjoyed the novel although I'm still only rating it a three out of five because of its' slow start, soap opera nonsense, and its' failure to come through on the murder until late in the novel.

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Considering that the book was given to me as a gift by a friend who knows I have an interest in the Hebrew Temples from ancient times (and still being fought over to the present day), I consider the book an OK read. It really had nothing to do with the ancient Hebrew Temples, but it did have an interesting W.W.II / Holocaust tie-in. Where, after all, did all of the Third Reich's gold go? The book proposes an interesting theory to answering this question.

I don't recommend this book except as a passing entertainment. There are much better books available to read.

Review by: Maximillian Ben Hanan