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from the dustjacket of the 1999 Harcourt Brace first edition Redemption When Ike Goldman, a seventy-eight-year-old retired law professor  at Columbia University, dissuades a much younger woman from  jumping off the George Washington Bridge, he never suspects that  his selfless action will lead to love. Nor does he suspect that  the sensitive and caring woman whom he saved from herself will be  accused of murdering her abusive ex-husband. Ike cannot believe that Elizabeth  could be capable of such an act, but he has known her for only  six weeks and cannot stop the questions that hound him. Was the  abuse that Elizabeth suffered during her eight-year marriage  enough to drive her to murder? Could Ike's love for her blind him  to a dark side of her personality? Does her refuge in her  Catholic faith mask a dreadful vengeance? Although sustained by his love for this  woman, Ike must admit to himself — if not to Elizabeth  — that the evidence points in her direction and nowhere  else. Now he must choose between following his heart, even if it  leads him into complicity in an unfathomable secret, or the loss  of his faith in love. In the swirling thrust and parry of  Elizabeth's trial, Ike is forced to examine his hopes, his  beliefs, and his love for a woman whose life hangs in the  balance. Howard Fast's newest novel combines the suspense of a  great courtroom drama with a thoughtful examination of love, the  ineffable combination between a man and a woman that trsnscends  all the differences whether of decades or doctrine.