"A meditation on the persistence of love and the power of an open heart to transcend seemingly inviolate borders." -Yossi Klein Halevi, author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor

When Daniel Jacobs decides to spend his junior year abroad in Israel, he never dreams he'll fall in love with both Jerusalem's Old City and an Israeli woman, Shoshana. It's the year religion becomes a part of his identity, from the heights of a simple rooftop. A year he encounters the tragic complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. A year that begins a four-decade-long love affair, as complicated and heartbreaking as the political conflict with which it's intertwined. As Daniel moves through life-through marriage and divorce, career and travel-he returns periodically to Jerusalem, where his heart faithfully remains.

A Rooftop in Jerusalem brings the Old City's walls, holy sites, and inhabitants to life, while putting a human face on headlines from the Middle East.

Matthew McAvoy's surprising nomination to lead his Christian denomination is, at first, exhilarating -- the apex of a career in ministry, education, and leadership. But that joy is undercut when a member of the church calls attention to Matthew's support for persons who are gay or lesbian. What follows is an eight-month ordeal, challenging Matthew and providing a new awareness of what the gospel demands. When the opposition becomes a threat, the story takes a sinister turn that involves not only Matthew but his whole family—and raises even more questions about the meaning of leadership in our age. Inspired by the author's own story, The Nominee shows that places we think are refuges can be the most dangerous.

It's 1967 in rural Iowa as drugs, corporate farming, and Vietnam are beginning to take their toll on small-town American life. When Charles Weaver's plans for the summer after high school graduation go awry, he ends up working for the street crew in his hometown before heading off to college.

Charles, school valedictorian and son of a lawyer, not only knows nothing about driving tractors and laying asphalt, he can't remember even meeting the regular members of the crew: Dexter, who collects discarded furniture for the house he's going to build someday in the Ozarks; the Shakespeare-quoting Moss, a teacher in rural schools before consolidation of the district, and their boss, Clyde, whose strength and temper are legendary in Savannah County.