The Impersonator

A Novel

“Uncle Michoel! If you don’t open up for me this minute, and I mean this minute, I’ll suspect that you were abducted, and an imposter is answering me in your place. And then I’m calling the police immediately!”

No response.

But after half a moment of shock, she heard him clearing his throat.
“Wonderful. Okay, call the police—and I’ll file a complaint against you for harassment.”

---

Mr. Michoel Perl’s abandoned house on Emek Refa’im Street is concealing a secret of some kind—or perhaps more than one. The secret tenant who has taken up residence there cannot either understand what happened to the owner. If Michoel is not there, and he left Mexico more than two months earlier, then where is he?

But the answer is not clear to Mr. Perl himself, either…

Michoel’s niece, Hinda, is very worried about him, but she has many other worries to deal with too. Like her mentally ill son Yosef, who keeps fluctuating between good days and worse ones. Or her estranged daughter Mali, whose resentment over Yosef ’s condition does not seem to abate. Or her stepdaughters’ relationship with her—or lack thereof.

The Impersonator is a suspenseful yet touching story that takes readers on a roller coaster ride through a dangerous cult in South Carolina to the psych ward of an Israeli hospital…from the office of a kind rabbi in Canada to the home of a wealthy Californian couple and their child prodigy daughter…and to many other stops along the way! Most significantly, this book is the story of how human warmth can melt barriers of any kind.

Originally serialized as Outside the Bubble

By Esther Rappaport