*Starred Review* What happens when an immortal man falls in love with a mortal woman? The biblical Isaac, whose father once nearly obeyed an order from God to kill his son, is now living in contemporary Los Angeles, just sort of floating through a life that will go on forever. When by chance he meets Ruth, Isaac is captivated, but, even though their relationship makes him happier than he’s been in a long time, he knows that it has a built-in expiration. The novel shares some themes with other well-known stories of immortality (Nicholas Monsarrat’s Master Mariner series, for example), but it’s anything but a retread. It’s an overcoming-the-odds love story where the odds are seriously, seemingly insurmountably, stacked against the lovers. It’s told in alternating chapters from Isaac’s and Ruth’s points of view; the opening chapters, in which we see Isaac struggling with inevitability and Ruth struggling with Isaac’s sudden reversal of affections, are especially compelling. We know something Ruth doesn’t know, and it’s painful being unable to comfort her. Any story with characters so real that we wish we could reach into the book and give them a hug demands to be read. --David Pitt, BookList