The Jerusalem Stone

by Dean Klein

Overview

The Iraq War has ended. Lance Corporal Simon Banner, a decorated Marine Scout sniper with more than one hundred verified kills to his name, leaves the Marines to return home. Disinterested in working nine to five, Simon chooses to sell his formidable skill with a rifle to those in the dangerous world of drug cartels. For years he takes on one contract after another, never failing to hit his target even at extreme limits of range. His successes as a paid killer inflate his reputation, causing demand for his services to soar and his contract fees to rise. Simon comes to be feared by gangs, police, even the DEA, as the ruthless and faceless assassin he is, someone that specializes in – and enjoys – taking life from afar. He is a man as far from God as one can be. The only love he feels for anyone is that for his young daughter, Elise, left to his care upon the death of his wife. One day, however, an assignment in Mexico goes terribly awry. Badly shaken by what he caused to happen, Simon takes time off to collect himself.

Elise's eleventh birthday draws near. The girl startles her father by letting him know she wishes to visit Jerusalem. The decision to go is no less than fateful. The day before they are to leave Israel, Elise decides she wants something to take home but nothing that can be bought. In a small field, she unearths an unusual stone that becomes her souvenir.

Back in the United States, Simon takes the stone in hand. Inexplicable and frightening events almost immediately begin to occur no matter where he is. To his immense shock, he discovers he can actually feel the crippling grief of complete strangers that tragically lost loved ones. In time he comes to realize his responses to their pain and heartache are his only chance to save his soul. He has no idea, however, how to explain any of this except by a strange stone found buried in the earth of Jerusalem.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940157288198
Publisher:	Dean Klein
Publication date:	12/14/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	532 KB

About the Author

The author is a former technical marketing director once responsible for the research and development of new business for operating companies as well as for corporate clients of Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA. Over the course of his career, he has helped his employers and clients of SRI collectively earn nearly a half-billion dollars in new product sales in the fields of specialty chemicals, specialty materials, advanced materials, high-purity metals and thin-film coatings, among many others.

Mr. Klein has written professionally for years. While employed at SRI, Mr. Klein's reports were published worldwide, read by CEOs and senior managers of major U.S., European and Japanese technology firms.

Spending his boyhood in Atlanta and later, Westfield, New Jersey, Mr. Klein holds bachelor's and Master's degrees in chemistry, biology and marketing (with a minor in English). His name appears on several patents though he largely spent his entire career in a marketing capacity in which he worked on almost a daily basis with research scientists.

Personal interests beyond writing include the study of vocabulary (now in excess of 60,000 words, not including words in medical or scientific domains), video games, crossword and other kinds of puzzles, baseball, visiting the South Seas, Lotus and Jaguar cars, the game of bridge, daily exercise, collecting exotic plants and taking care of his best-of-house wire-hair fox terrier.