Life, Death & Bialys

A Father/Son Baking Story

In 2002 Flip Schaffer asked his son to join him in an intensive bread class at a fancy culinary school in New York. At, first, the idea seemed considerably less than half-baked. The two hadn't spent much time together-not since Flip left Dylan and his siblings in the care of their crazy mother thirty years before. Neither knew the first thing about making bread. And, Flip's end-stage lung cancer was expected to kill him long before the class began.
But Flip made it. The two spent seven days at the French Culinary Institute becoming artisanal bakers and seven tumultuous nights in a shabby Bowery hotel getting to know each other. And to their mutual astonishment, just in time, they came to something like terms of forgiveness.
As moving as it is irreverent, Life, Death & Bialys is about how an imperfect father said goodbye to his son and to his city and how a reluctant son discovered the essence of forgiveness.
Dylan Schaffer is the author of the award winning legal thrillers Misdemeanor Man, which won Mystery Ink Magazine's 2004 Gumshoe Award for best debut, and I Right the Wrongs, both of which were Booksense picks. In his spare time he is a criminal defense lawyer who has served as appellate counsel in hundreds of cases ranging from drunk driving to multiple murders. He lives in Oakland, California, with many animals and one wife.
Excerpt: Als drait zich arum broit un toit It all comes down to bread and death -Yiddish proverb
Flip greets me in the airport lobby. I expect to see some sign that the cancer is taking its toll. But when I find him, he seems fine. He doesn't look like he's dropped any weight. His breathing is normal.... I want to run to him and bury my face in his stomach and bawl into his shirt. I want to tell him how much I miss him and beg him not to go away again.

At the same time I am compelled to punch him in the face.