An Eye For An Eye: The Vase Of Many Colors by Steve Shear.
The Vase of Many Colors Books I, II, and III explore the orthodoxic ills in Western Religions in a way that taps into the emotions of ordinary readers looking for serious and important content while at the same time wanting a truly exciting story. To achieve this, it utilizes three distinct parts in which first-person accounts describe the journey of Ira Neebest from birth until he returns from the jungles of India after being kidnapped by ISIS and the Iranian Ayatollah for writing The First Coming, a Nobel Prize winning novel about the evils of religious orthodoxy.
The first part, An Eye for an Eye, (Book I) portrays Ira’s parents and their love affair made in heaven… if only they were left alone to relish it. It also portrays their family, religious Jews on Ira’s maternal side and devout atheists on his paternal side. That in and by itself makes for serious conflicts, but that’s the least of it. When Rebecca, Ira’s mother, becomes pregnant out of wedlock carrying Ira in her belly, all hell breaks loose. She is disowned by her father and despised by her mother-in-law. What happens to them reminds me of Romeo and Juliet, well at least Juliet. The second part, Black Hearts & Hungry Bears, (Book II) revolves around Ira’s wife, Natalie who was born into a truly dysfunctional, poor Catholic family and abandoned at the age of ten. She was left at a Catholic boarding school, raped at the age of fifteen by monk teaching there, and then accused of causing his demise. Much later she met and fell in love with Ira at an art studio in Florence, Italy. She could not have imagined what was to follow. The third part, The First Coming, (Book III) describes Ira’s remarkable journey including his own book, The First Coming, and the trouble it caused him and Natalie. He was shot, kidnapped by Iranian extremists’ intent on beheading him; he was left to die in the Indian jungle where he confronted a giant white tiger and other creatures during his fits of delusion. In the meantime, Natalie was poisoned by the same extremists and remained in a coma.
All of this between the front cover that displays the very vase of many colors and the back cover that quotes several 5 Star reviews.
5 Stars: Underlying Conflicts Are As Old As Humanity!
Author Steve Shear skillfully brings the reader into ‘‘The Vase of Many Colors’: An Eye for an Eye Book One’ with a strong ‘Prologue’ set on July 4, 1973 in New York City. A stranger passes the newsstand to catch a quick glimpse if the headline “Jerusalem Rabbi is found dead in in his hotel room”.
The author sets up each chapter with the main character’s name, date and location.
I quickly identified with his main character Rebecca. With a strong Jewish name, a father whose family dominance is driven by his Jewish Orthodoxy who rules with a harsh hand driving his daughter to question her faith and go in search of her own truth, even if this means hiding a copy of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and listening to Elvis Presley on her radio.
Leonard an Episcopalian by birth, (his parents both professors at Amherst, Massachusetts) struggles with his own Identity and restrictions formed by his beliefs system from infancy, now clash with college culture and his own atheist leanings.
Hlomo Schoenfeld is studying to become a Rabbi and is stunned when his arranged wife to be, Rebecca, shunned his proposal in late spring of 1956 in Jerusalem.
Morris Goldshein is uncle to Rebecca and makes annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem from St. Louis. Although he is not her favorite uncle, she is his favorite niece. He is impressed with Rebecca’s spirit of independence. Morris along with Rebecca’s Aunt Esther, will champion her throughout her life.
The stage is set, Leonard leaves Amherst for Washington University in St. Louis in the early fall of 1956 and Rebecca leaves Jerusalem in the winter of 1956 for St. Louis to live with Uncle Morris and Aunt Esther in America.
The family Rabbi instills and enforces doctrine, morality and commandments, it is the fear and guilt that either glues or unglued Rebecca. The results of extreme control (physically, mentally and spiritually proves devastating.
I quote from Rebecca’s Aunt Esther (in St Louis) (Chapter 21): “Metaphorically speaking, I felt as if I were caught between the jaws of an emotional vise given the situation· now facing me, the situation of my own making, the situation in which Rebecca blamed herself for the death of her parents and siblings. On the one hand, I thanked God every day for having my niece’s love and friendship, not to mention the love and friendship of Leonard and Ira, Ira most of all. On the other hand, I uprooted Rebecca. I introduced her to Leonard. I championed the environment that promoted their relationship. I was the one who set into motion a runaway locomotive that I should have known would derail and crash into a chasm of unrelenting guilt. But never in my wildest nightmares did I contemplate the breadth of that chasm or its impenetrable depth.”
The characters are vivid and the story well written. The underlying conflicts are as old as humanity, as young people try to come to terms with their family structure, religious or non-religious indoctrination, resulting in the physical, emotional and spiritual pain of seen or perceived hypocrisy and the death trap of fear, guilt and yes, revenge (‘Eye for An Eye’) that extends to generation and must be revisited.
Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses’ zero in on the ills of religious orthodoxy and extreme ideology. Author Steve Shear’s approach to the same age-old questions, brings the imagery and personal relationships, and consequences that affects his characters right onto the page for his readers to arise at their own conclusions.
Editorial Review and Endorsement by Book Marketing Global Network.
Product Details:
Book One in the ‘The Vase of Many Colors’ Series
Paperback: 301 Pages
Publisher: Independently Published (January 27, 2022)
Language: English
Fiction (Literary)
Amazon Print:
https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Vase-Many-Colors/dp/B09RFY5J1M/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Customer Ratings:
https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Vase-Many-Colors/dp/B09RFY5J1M/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=#customerReviews
Author’s Page At Book Marketing Global Network:
https://bookmarketingglobalnetwork.com/book-marketing-global-network/author-steve-shear/
