In a small Ital­ian vil­lage, nine-year-old Luca Taviano catch­es a stub­born cold and is sub­se­quent­ly diag­nosed with leukemia. After an exhaus­tive search, a match turns up 3000 miles away in the form of an unlike­ly donor: Joseph Neiman, a rab­bi in Brook­lyn, New York, who is suf­fer­ing from a debil­i­tat­ing cri­sis of faith. As Luca’s young nurse, Nina Vocel­li, risks her career and races against time to help save the spir­it­ed red­head­ed boy, she uncov­ers ter­ri­ble secrets from World War II — secrets that reveal how a Catholic boy could have Jew­ish genes.

Can inher­i­tance be tran­scend­ed by acci­dents of love? That is the ques­tion at the heart of This Mag­nif­i­cent Dap­pled Sea, a nov­el that chal­lenges the idea of iden­ti­ty and cel­e­brates the ties that bind us together.