Dave Margoshes's A Simple Carpenter is many things: a meditation on memory and identity, on religious faith and doubt, on the yearning for a messiah, and on the perennially tangled, fraught state of Arab-Israeli relations. Out of all these elements he has constructed a tale that is part mystery and part fable that blends present day realities with myth and magic. This is a novel as beguiling as it is ambitious.
- Guy Vanderhaeghe Author of August Into Winter
Dave Margoshes' new novel, A Simple Carpenter, is fully original and equally surprising, part fable, part travelogue complete with historical details and occasionally political, part post-modern mystery, sometimes (the reader suspects) approaching a revelatory religious text replete with extraordinary happenings that might be miracles (or not) including helpful monkeys, Biblical creatures and a large black bird. As the carpenter wanders on his not-quite-quest - or is it? - I followed Margoshes' hero/anti-hero with unflagging interest focusing hard to figure out who he actually is, what the story really is, and where it could be going. This is a novel written out of deep thought, enormous cleverness, leavened by a satirical sense of humour. I was riveted right to the startling ending. I can't recommend A Simple Carpenter highly enough.
- Sharon Butala author of Leaving Wisdom