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by Aw Schade (Author)
Attorney Jacob Hinsen built his professional life on unwavering evidence and cold, hard logic, winning case after case by demanding proof. But his fortress of certainty is annihilated when his nine-year-old daughter, Jessica, dies senselessly in a traffic accident, just weeks after he promised her they would always be together.
Consumed by a grief that morphs into a lawyer's desperate need for verifiable facts, Jacob abandons his career, leaving behind a lucrative partnership, family and friends. His single, obsessive mission becomes the cross-examination of faith. He must find evidence that God exists and that Jessica survived death somewhere beyond reach.
Jacob embarks on a six-month odyssey across three continents, approaching the world's great religions; Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, with the rigor of an attorney and the profound respect of a seeker. He travels to Rome, Istanbul, and Jerusalem, meeting with priests, imams, and rabbis, diligently studying their sacred texts and rigorously weighing their testimonies. He does not discount their profound conviction; he asks if they can demonstrate it.
At every turn, Jacob discovers a devastating, inescapable pattern: all religious traditions offer absolute certainty and promise reunion with the dead, yet none can provide the empirical proof he can verify. He realizes that this reliance on unverifiable assertions holds true even for those who claim certainty about the finality of death, like atheists and academics.
Jacob returns home with nothing-no proof, no certainty, no comfort. The investigation that was supposed to save him has destroyed everything: his faith, his marriage, his grip on reality. Now he faces two truths he cannot reconcile: he will never know if his daughter survives death, yet how he lives still matters. One will break him. The other might save him.
Literary Fiction
Metaphysical & Visionary
Philosophical Fiction
