Check out the Sequel!
A Door Never Opened

A scholarly novel examining the search by young people for their identity and exploring intergenerational conflicts.

Publisher Comments

By 1974, with the war over in Vietnam, much of the campus unrest of the 60s and 70s was also part of history. A notable exception was at Blantyre University, a veritable tinderbox of student discontent. With this as a backdrop, this scholarly novel is an engrossing examination of the search by young people for their identity. Many of the philosophies and movements of those turbulent times are explored, both in and out of the classroom. The counter culture is brought to life. Mental and emotional conflicts between the generations, including the older and newer radicals, thread their way through the exposition. Emerging out of the unsettling events is a captivating love story.  

From http://www.booknote.com/zafren.htm 

As described on the cover, this is "a scholarly novel." The story is threaded with well-researched ideas, quotes, and proverbs. Three actual college seminars are presented. A form of nonfiction within fiction. Employing intergenerational characters within a college setting in 1974 that still contains radical reactions spilling over from the 60s, here is a philosophical introspection of the perpetual coming of age syndrome in an academic novel.

The search by young people for their identity coupled with their anxiety to be adults. The story explores the needs that vacillate with the expediency of the moment and the influence of those who enter the lives of the characters. The desire for acceptance; the need for love. The dilemma of the older generation in wanting to alleviate the apprehensions in young people and yet secretly desiring that they suffer through the same disillusionment and disappointments that they had to endure.

The tragic truism that a regret can be the driving force and dictate the direction of one's life. Yet, there arises the optimism that comes with discovering that one is not alone, and that satisfying answers for every individual can be found.

A DELICIOUSLY INTRIGUING NOVEL OF IDEAS AND LOVE, May 4, 2001 Reviewer: Glenn L. Reitze  (Amazon.Com) from Fairfax, VA United States 

"In a World We Never Made" is a is a deliciously intriguing novel of philosophy, psychology, and social ideas that is also a tale of love, stress, and coming of age - of the conflicts as well as loving interactions of generations as they affect a handful of students and professors at a small university in the early 1970s. It is a well-structured, carefully written work in the tradition of Henry James, John P. Marquand, and Louis Auchicloss - and is good enough to deserve a place alongside the works of these elegant and renown writers.

This novel is a flawed masterpiece - flawed because much of its dialogue is excessively formal, even for an academic setting, and the conversation often sounds more like exchanges of carefully drafted letters. But it is well worth forgiving the flaws of the dialogue for its content, for the richness of its ideas, and of the wisdom that develops from it. And despite this flaw, the novel has thrust, power, and strong human interest, along with much wisdom - some of it of a universal nature, other the private wisdom of one man's unique vision. But I will say too much about the plot, as I do not wish to spoil any reader's enjoyment of its sometimes surprising twists and turns.

I don't know if this book will find commercial success - as a first novel from a small press that seems especially unlikely . But this is a good, wise, and honest work, and deserves to be widely appreciated - in this book form, and perhaps even as a movie - with Tom Hanks, perhaps (with his hair grayed a bit), as the young Professor Justin Post!

Daniel Hill Zafren is a retired Government attorney, with an earlier background in private and corporate legal practice, as well as in law school teaching. He runs an antique clock business, and is a lover of the country and of nature.

He is now working on the sequel to this book. A Door Never Opened is a story that takes place in present time and has some of the same characters found in the earlier opus. Additional philosophical and thought-provoking ideas and events are contemplated.

home    |    about us     |     contact us    |     related sites