Tilia Klebenov Jacobs, Wrong Place, Wrong Time; Linden Tree Press, (c) 2013, ISBN 978-0615805597, 400 pages, cover price unlisted.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO- – While reading and enjoying this novel about an almost-ethical kidnapper, I kept wondering why the author had decided that the female victim in this story should be a well-educated Jewish housewife? Perhaps 95 percent of the story has nothing to do with religion or ethnicity. For the most part, the book is a psychological drama, examining the relationship between a kidnap victim and her abductor.
Did author Tilia Klebenov Jacobs simply want to make the novel eligible for inclusion in the many Jewish book fairs that are held across the country? Did she feel compelled to provide an outlet for the flashes of inside ethnic humor that occasionally leavened this story of abduction, flight, trial, and reckoning? Or was there a deeper reason?
At one point in the story, the victim, Tsara Abrams Adelman, had been compelled to make an exhausting climb through inhospitable terrain. After they arrived at kidnapper Michael Westbrook’s hiding place, he decided it was at last time to eat. Being an expert Marine Corps marksman, he promptly shot a wild turkey, heated up a can of beans, and offered to share some of the meal with the famished Tsara.
However, the beans had bacon in them. Under the circumstances, Tsara wondered, could she override the law of kashrut’s ban on pork products? She decided that it was an absolute imperative to stay healthy and so she ate the beans as well as the turkey which, having been shot and its head sliced off by a man who wouldn’t know the meaning of the word shochet, certainly wasn’t kosher either. Necessity being necessity, Tsara gobbled the meal up.
Michael hadn’t intended to kidnap Tsara, who had just arrived on a visit to the New Hampshire chateau of her rich uncle Castle Thornlocke. He thought he could kidnap Thornlocke’s 14-year-old daughter, Zaylie, and then exchange her for his six-year-old son, whom Thornlocke earlier in the day had abducted with the help of Libertyville, N.H.,’s corrupt two-man police force. Thornlocke and the two officers, who had grown up as the town bullies, had made a business of abducting children and then extorting money from their parents before releasing them.
Upon breaking into the room where Tsara, rather than Zaylie, was staying, it was too late for Michael to change course. As the book’s title suggests, Tsara had been at the wrong place, at the wrong time.
In 95 short chapters–some just a page or two in length–and with lots of action, the novel has the aura of a screenplay in waiting. Although it starts off a big shaky–requiring readers to believe no one would have called higher authorities to report the crimes of the two policemen and Thornlocke–the plot becomes increasingly more believable and absorbing.
If you like adventure, suspense, and action, this novel is for you.
For Jewish readers, the surprise comes when Tsara ponders from the standpoint of Jewish law and ethics the limits of forgiveness. Can Tsara forgive Michael–whatever his motive might have been–for all the pain and fear he caused her and her family? Will she honestly be able to say before the next Yom Kippur that she has forgiven this man?
I have a feeling that readers of all religions–not just Jews–will debate Tsara’s answer.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
I enjoyed your review and I may even read the book.