Goyhood by Reuven Fenton; 2024. Hardcover.

A devoutly Orthodox Jewish man discovers in middle age that he's not, in fact, Jewish, and embarks on a remarkable road trip to come to grips with his fate.

When Mayer Belkin fled small-town Georgia for Brooklyn nearly thirty years ago, he thought he'd left his wasted youth behind. Now he's a Talmud scholar married into one of the greatest rabbinical families in the world - a dirt-poor country boy reinvented in the image of God. But his mother's untimely death brings a shocking revelation: Mayer and his ne'er-do-well twin brother David aren't, in fact, Jewish.

Traumatized and spiritually bereft, Mayer's only recourse is to convert to Judaism. But the earliest date he can get is a week from now. What are two estranged brothers to do in the interim? So begins the Belkins' Rumspringa through America's Deep South with Mom's ashes in tow, plus two tagalongs: an insightful Instagram influencer named Charlayne Valentine and Popeye, a one-eyed dog. As the crew gets tangled up in a series of increasingly surreal adventures, Mayer grapples with a God who betrayed him and an emotionally withdrawn wife in Brooklyn who has yet to learn her husband is a counterfeit Jew.