Storyteller | Author of "The Secret of Alicanto"
About The Author
Storyteller | Author of "The Secret of Alicanto"
Inder Verma is a cancer biologist who has published over four hundred peer reviewed articles in major scientific journals. Discoveries from his laboratory in the last four decades have included identification of cancer genes, animal models of lung, breast and brain cancers. He pioneered the use of viruses to deliver therapeutic genes for human gene therapy. Verma has been a founder of several biotech companies and served on numerous Scientific Advisory Boards.
about the book
A Story of Second Chances, Hidden Truths, and the Family You Never Expected
La Jolla, CA Author publishes his second novel, The Secret Of Alicanto, a tale of Abandonment, Resilience and Love Again.
The Secret of the Alicanto is a story of an unlikely romance between two people living in different universes — a young single working mother of twins, and an older university professor who lives 1,500 miles away.
MARIA Oliveira a Brazilian immigrant is a nurse in West Palm Beach Florida whose husband absconded before the birth of her children in the fall of 1999. Her luck changes when in a church lottery she wins a one-week jaunt to Portugal. Torn about leaving her one-year old children, her close friends offer to take care of them. On a cruise to the Douro Valley, part of her travel itinerary, she meets JERRY FEINBERG, a professor of Biology, who is spending time in Portugal as part of his sabbatical. Both lonely, they strike up a friendship which soon becomes a romance, though one that doesn’t stand much chance of surviving beyond the vacation. Jerry, 55 is divorced and established in his life near Boston, where he teaches at Harvard. Maria, 37, has been left a single parent by her mercurial husband, a doctor who returned to his native Pakistan and has not communicated since. Given the age difference, Jerry is hesitant to express his growing emotions for her and is thrilled when she invites him to visit her in Florida.
The story of this twisty relationship is told from Maria and Jerry’s alternating POVs. When Jerry takes her up on the invitation, Maria tries to delay the visit, worried about his losing interest in her when he sees her real messy life. Despite initial hiccups, including Jerry’s lack of experience with children, on this first visit, Jerry’s attachment to the twins, Lara and Peter, begins to grow. But when he proposes moving in together in his house near Boston, she demurs. From her POV, we learn this is in part because she is hiding a big secret that she hasn`t shared with him or anybody else. This grows into a conflict that could destroy their relationship, until Maria breaks down and reveals that her husband is not the father of her twins.
other book
Parallel Lives
Author and Cancer Biologist Publishes Medical Fiction Novel
When a School Teacher’s Life is Turned Upside Down from a Brain Tumor, Two Doctors Race Against the Clock to Find a Cure Before All Hope is Lost
Parallel Lives, a new book by Inder Verma
In an amazing coincidence, three lives intersect in a race against the clock, to find a cure for a deadly brain tumor. Meanwhile, one man and his family come together in hopes of a miracle.
“Parallel Lives reads like a detective novel. There was clearly an incentive to see how it would end. As a result once I started I finished it the next day. That does not happen with all the books I read. I was impressed by the detailed medical and scientific descriptions ….” – Anton Berns, Former Director, The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam.
“I was captivated by Parallel Lives and wanted to know how you would bring it to its end. You really master linking both science and medicine in a field to which you contributed a lot. Bravo for this tour de force”. -Jacques Beckmann, University de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
