The Hesterville Bible Trial - A Novel

During Passover, Adrian Taylor, a Manhattan attorney and former Congressman, sees televised reports about a white supremacist demonstration on the campus of Tulane University in New Orleans. Various militia groups have organized as the American Identity Party and espouse a chilling neo-pagan religion called the Church of Natural Humanism. Adrian is concerned about this new virulent supremacist strain, but he does not think it will touch him personally.

Until it does.

The town of Hesterville, Pennsylvania, becomes a flashpoint for the new movement. Two local businessmen retain Adrian to fight a municipal ordinance forbidding the display of other flags on national holidays. Adrian succeeds, but tensions simmer. Matters come to a head on the Fourth of July with a violent demonstration reminiscent of Charlotteville.

Adrian suffers a deep personal tragedy during the Hesterville riot, and he is determined to strike back by discrediting the fundamental tenets of natural humanism. He takes on the case of a Brooklyn teacher fired for using the Old Testament as a historical resource in her sixth-grade class. The resulting trial is an epic battle that becomes a media sensation.

The Hesterville Bible Trial is a singular hybrid of fiction and non-fiction. While the story and the characters are fictional, the testimonies of the witnesses at the trial are drawn from the works of biblical and archaeological scholars. The full transcript of the trial appears as an appendix to the book.

Yaakov Yosef Reinman has authored numerous books on history, philosophy, Torah and Talmud. He has also authored a twelve-volume saga of historical fiction under the name Avner Gold. He resides with his wife, Zvia, in Lakewood, New Jersey.

yyreinman@gmail.com | www.rabbireinman.com

Advance praise for The Hesterville Bible Trial:

"Here's today's most novel novel, penned by a scholar gifted with all the flair and vigor of a professional ace novelist. Not only that, but the author's flowing and compellingly readable narrative carries the reader... into a dramatic law-court confrontation. Old-style academic self-deception clashes with a modern-day array of tangible hard facts in a spirited battle for the Bible in the cause of dispersing modern superstitions just as insidious in shackling our freedom of rational thought and speech as was anything from a more distant past."

Dr. Kenneth A. Kitchen University of Liverpool Department of Archaeology

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