About the books
The Secret of Alicanto
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. Shocked less by the revelation of the paternity of her children than by her keeping this secret from him, Jerry returns home. But after a while of missing her, he realizes Maria was keeping the secret to protect her children and implores her again to move in with him.
A year after their fortuitous meeting in Portugal, Maria and Jerry get married and move to his home in the Boston suburb of Belmont. Much to Maria`s relief, Jerry adjusts to fatherhood, taking them hiking, skiing and camping. Maria starts to work at Mass General hospital on a gene therapy clinical trial, and Jerry cuts down his work trips to be home more. When the twins are 10, the family travels to Brazil to visit Maria’s sister and her family. From there they go to the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile, the place Alicanto is rumored to reside, where at night, their wings shine like precious metals, their eyes radiate strange lights, and they feed on gold and silver. Lara in particular is on the hunt for an Alicanto.
On the last day of their stay in San Pedro de Atacama, while strolling the main street, Maria gets separated from the family and stops at a shop where Alicanto necklaces just like hers are on a display. Looking through the glass window, she recognizes the man behind the counter and is stunned. Torn about what to do, she walks away, only to see her children and Jerry wander into the shop…
Parallel Lives
A Novel by Inder Verma
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.
On his 50th birthday, Graham Bunker, a tall, trim, handsome school teacher, in perfect health woke up in the middle of the night with an intense headache and a general state of restlessness. Chalking it up to the end of school year crush, he went about his day and later celebrated his fiftieth with his wife and children. However, in a matter of weeks, his life and that of his family will change drastically.
Yacov Kaufman, born in Israel the same year as Graham, was lured by several venture capitalists to become the chief scientist of a biotech company in the San Francisco Bay Area. Charged with finding cures that will be highly profitable for the company, Kaufman believes he’s found his dream job. A job that will save thousands of lives. For him patients will always come before profits.
Rakesh Mehra, obtained his medical degree in India and trained in Boston as a Neuro-oncologist. His life is up ended the day Graham Bunker and his wife walk into his office. What begins as a simple exam turns into something far more dire, yet it also proves to be an extraordinary opportunity that pushes Mehra to question the oath he took as a doctor to do no harm.
Two men come together to save one man, a family and possibly hundreds in this fast-paced and moving story about the boundaries of medicine and the limitless empathy one man can have for another.
