How to Design a Threshold

Father HOWARD SCHOEFF knows everything in the future, divine and irreverent. He has come to New York City to tell of its fortune—the holiest of clairvoyants if you will. Nonetheless, like all of us, Father Schoeff feels uncertainties about life. For one, why did his college girlfriend ever exist only to leave him? Another is why does he feel his sense of humor and off-the-wall style of preaching are the reasons for his calling? Likewise, Sunni Muslim Zeyad Nadeem Mugrabi’s life has also taken him down an unexpected path. After leaving his home, family, and job in an Iraqi shipyard, Zeyad stowed away on a ship, hoping to reach England. But instead, he oversleeps and lands in Manhattan. There his jewelry-making talents earn him refuge with Raphael Antonisz, a Jewish businessman, and his socialite daughter, Chereb, who is fresh from celebrating her 20th birthday. These are just a few of the characters in this pastiche of souls lost and found, set in New York in the 1950s and ’60s; some characters spend their nights amid bright lights and fine drink, while others are destitute, orphaned, brutalized, or jailed, and none end their story as the same people they were when they began it. But through it all, there’s a constant thread of love and faith—what it means to have it, to lose it, to run up against those who feel it differently than you do. The story is compelling and honest, with nontraditional prose to match: “What was more preferred, and delivered, was that Chereb had the chance to communicate, and everything seemed calm after.” This comes when the socialite sees the brief resurrection of her friend. Remarkable sentences often come up, yet they are sincere, forcing the reader to take a considered approach to each astonishing scene. “A unique reading experience and a complex, character-driven story.”TED BERNAL GUEVARA “weaves a poetic, ethereal tale of intersecting lives, cultures, and religions in mid-20th-century New York City.” -Kirkus IndieMr. Guevara is also the author of True Feel, A Circle with Two Corners, Days of Slint, and Lips of a Mastodon.