The Thirteenth Hour: A Novel

Deborah Stern, an American-born biologist working in a Jerusalem hospital, is nearly caught up in a terrorist attack that kills four women. Terrified, she signs up for a self-defense course, unaware that the Israeli General Security Service is watching it, hoping to find a civilian for a special mission.
Raba Alhassan was raised in Detroit and has only recently returned to Jericho to live with her husband's aristocratic Palestinian family. She is stunned to learn that it is her brother who has killed the four women in Jerusalem. She little suspects that his actions were a ploy to lure her into the terrorist web.
Nudged along by operatives willing to play on their loyalties, both women find themselves confronting imminent violence that threatens not only the fate of the stumbling peace accords but their own families. When the terrorists' plot unfolds in a diabolical manner beyond either Deborah's or Raba's imagining, the two women must resolve the conflicts between their national loyalties and their personal moralities to have any chance of saving dozens of innocent lives.

Two women?one Arab and one Jewish?become embroiled in a deadly terrorist scheme that explodes into savage violence in this gripping debut thriller from Sofer, a journalist who lives in Israel. Deborah Stern is an American-born biologist in Jerusalem to research a skin disease common among Arab children. One afternoon, she narrowly escapes the violence of Ibrahim, a Muslim fundamentalist who has just massacred four Jewish mothers on a public playground. Terrified, Deborah joins a women's self-defense class where her handsome instructor, Raphi Lahav, seduces her into working for the Israeli General Security Service. Deborah's Palestinian counterpart is Ibrahim's sister, Raba Alhassan. Raised in Detroit, she's returned to Jericho to live with the aristocratic Palestinian family of her husband, a famous heart surgeon. She is coerced into joining an ultra-violent fundamentalist cell by threats against her husband's life. On one level, the narrative concerns the courage of two women whose lives converge when terrorists plan to blow up the Nativity Church in Bethlehem, in an attempt to smother peace negotiations. On a deeper, more sinister level, it concerns the potentially violent nature lurking just below the surface of eminently civilized women. Deborah and Raba find new depths of anger in reacting to the cruelty that adds a visceral lash to the narrative: a bomb blast hurls an innocent child through a bus windshield; a woman is tortured; a throat is slashed ear to ear; a man kills by thrusting a knife into his victim's gut and twisting it back and forth "as if he were wringing out a towel." Suspense builds until the final confrontation in a Bethlehem school, where the anguished issues of the Arab-Israeli conflict are played out in bloody fashion. While Sofer is not yet a smooth stylist, she succeeds in conveying the psychological climate of a troubled land through a timely and resonant story.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

When a terrorist knifes four women in a nearby park in Jerusalem, Deborah Stern, an American biologist living in Israel, fears for her children's safety. She enrolls in a self-defense class taught by an undercover Israeli secret agent who is looking for the perfect civilian to infiltrate the Seventh Century, the terrorist cadre responsible for the park deaths. Deborah, a loving mother whose job would provide a cover, is perfect. On the other side of the border, psychologist Raba Alhassan, an Arab woman raised in the U.S., where she met her aristocratic Palestinian husband, hears of the terrorist attack in the park and soon discovers her brother was the terrorist. Horrified by his actions, yet compelled to help family, she is an easy victim for the Seventh Century, which needs a well-placed pawn. As the terrorist plot unfolds, both women are deeply entangled in a web of political lies, religious hatreds, and personal beliefs that will influence their decisions and decide the fate of innocent children. A thought-provoking, intense read. Highly recommended for all collections. Melanie Duncan