About Sam

Psychologists of my ilk are lucky: we get to study the very life challenges that give us trouble. So, I’ve written about midlife career change, about the complicated relationship between fathers and sons and daughters, about men’s struggles with intimacy in general, and about the search for a vibrant Jewish spirituality.

About two decades ago, I had a major realization (or, more accurately, I remembered what I knew before I got a PhD in psychology): fiction can provide a unique, vital window into life’s problems, often deeper than what nonfiction can provide. Hence my novels about war and people’s resilience: in The Stethoscope Cure, a psychiatrist wobbles emotionally while treating returning vets; in The Wolf Boy, a complex relationship develops between a great general and the orphaned boy who becomes his scribe. More recently, Saving Penny explores our mixed attitudes toward nature and the wild, as several high school students struggle to find the wherewithal to save a wild bobcat from being hunted down.

And I’m proud to announce that the fate of nature and the wild in our lives is the focus on my new blog, Wild-Life.