Waking Lions

Starred review from December 19, 2016
A moment’s inattention upends multiple lives in Gundar-Goshen’s powerful thriller, the Israeli author’s first novel to be published in the U.S. When Dr. Eitan Green uncovered corruption at the hospital he worked at in Tel Aviv, he was forced to take a less desirable position in Beersheba in the Negev desert. Now, after a too-long shift at Beersheba’s Soroka Hospital, an exhausted Eitan glances at the Moon in his rearview window during his drive home. While his eyes are off the road, he strikes an Eritrean man, who suffers a skull fracture. Unable to do anything to save the man’s life, the guilt-ridden Eitan flees. His nightmare worsens when the victim’s wife appears at his home, bearing the wallet he dropped at the scene of the hit-and-run. He agrees to give her fellow Eritreans medical treatment at night in exchange for her keeping silent about his role in her husband’s death. The arrangement forces Eitan to lie to his police detective wife, who has been looking into the fatality. The psychological complications match the plot ones and will please Ruth Rendell fans. Agent: Grainne Fox, Fletcher & Company.

Starred review from December 15, 2016
In this intense moral thriller, an Israeli doctor conceals a fatal hit-and-run, is blackmailed by his victim's widow into operating an underground clinic for refugees, and sees everything he ever believed about himself crumble to bits. Neurosurgeon Eitan Green has just gotten out from a very late night at the ER. He is burning off steam on a deserted road in his SUV, bellowing along with Janis Joplin, "thinking that the moon was the most beautiful he had ever seen when he hit[s] the man." From the moment we meet him, Eitan's bad luck will become tangled in his good intentions, his poor choices with his righteous ones, his appeal with his weakness. The very vehicle in which he had the accident was a consolation prize to make up for having to move from Tel Aviv to dusty Beersheba: he was transferred when he uncovered corruption at his hospital. So he's quite an ethical guy, as murderers go, and a devoted husband and father, too. Further complicating the situation and spinning off additional consequences, his wife is the police detective assigned to investigate the hit-and-run accident. By then Eitan has already learned that his getaway was not as clean as he had hoped: the day after the accident, a beautiful Eritrean woman shows up at his door with his wallet, dropped at the scene--and a demand. "During the day, you can do whatever you want...but you will keep your nights free." Free to provide medical care to an endless stream of illegal immigrants whom he will treat in secret in a garage. That is just the first of the twists upon twists upon twists in this story--more than one of which will have readers yelping out loud. Gundar-Goshen's U.S. debut seems poised to catch fire, with the multiple narrative perspectives and dizzying reversals that connoisseurs of this genre adore.

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November 1, 2017

Winner of the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize for 2017, this combination of psychological thriller, crime novel, and morality play revolves around Dr. Eitan Green, a respected neurosurgeon who has been exiled to the remote southern town of Beersheva. After working a long shift, he takes his SUV off-roading in the desert and accidentally hits and kills an Eritrean refugee. Eitan flees the scene, but the victim's wife discovers his wallet and blackmails him into establishing an underground clinic to treat undocumented immigrants from Africa. NBC bought the rights to adapt the novel into a TV series but will change the setting to Beverly Hills, CA. Gundar-Goshen's debut novel, One Night, Markovitch, which won Israel's prestigious Sapir Prize for debut fiction in 2012, was translated into English by Sondra Silverston but so far has only been published in the UK. (Xpress Reviews, 2/10/17)

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2017
Disgruntled Israeli neurosurgeon Eitan Green is out for a joyride on the desert, under the full moon, when he hits and kills an Eritrean illegal immigrant. He flees the scene and returns home to his police-detective wife and two young sons, but the next day, the dead man's wife shows up with his wallet, which he had dropped at the scene. She has an unusual demand: she will keep quiet if he meets her that night to treat a patient in an abandoned garage behind the cafe where she works. But, as it turns out, it isn't just one night and one patient. It's night after night, and patient after patient. When Eitan mires himself in lies, to his family and coworkers, the situation grows more tense. As characters reveal previously hidden facets, Gundar-Goshen's mesmerizing novel, her first to be published in English, moves continually into unexpected territory. Smoothly alternating points of view, it uses the format of a thriller to study the almost unbridgeable gap between insider and outsider. The complex relationships between Israelis, Bedouin Arabs, and Eritreans may be unique to Israel, but that social dynamic will reverberate meaningfully with U.S. readers as well.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)