Exilarch

Exilarch is an action-packed novel brimming with the kind of dramatic plot twists and romantic escapades that appeal to readers hungry for the good old-fashioned, historically authentic plots popularized by such authors as James Michener, Howard Fast, Leon Uris, and Herman Wouk. Shaltiel blows the dust off ancient times and infuses them with a living vitality; his knack for telling a good story is reminiscent of Robert Graves’s irreverent and intimate best-seller , Claudius. Both a swashbuckler and a romance, Exilarch teems with characters that will intrigue readers of both sexes and all ages.

The plot: in an unadorned ceramic jar, a college student finds an ancient diary—older than the Dead Sea Scrolls by several hundred years—that irrefutably links him to King David. The author of the priceless manuscript is the mysterious Prince Dara, adoptive son of Cyrus the Great and heir to the last King of Judah; the student is the estranged son of an eminent Harvard historian with a dark past, and grandson of a legendary Israeli hero who defended the City of David from her modern enemies. Here’s a story with all the elements to entice the most jaded reader: a quest for identity; an archeological discovery; the tangled destinies of kings and princes, fathers and sons; and love lost and rekindled.

While presented as fiction, Exilarch is based on a hard core of surprising fact. Author Shaltiel’s pursuit of his own ancestry, via not only traditional sources, but the modern techniques of DNA testing, has led to most interesting results, which have already been presented, in part, in a 90-minute BBC documentary, and will appear separately in a non-fiction book, now in preparation.