Looking Always
Quotes of praise
for the book
Roger Roffman's must-read story comes at a time when the COVID pandemic has confronted us ALL with an existential challenge: do we dwell on the things that hold us back, becoming prisoners of our own minds? Or do we reach out, beyond ourselves, to find a new way of being? The choice can be frustratingly obscure sometimes, the way is never easy. But Roffman’s compelling characters come to a hard-won answer to this challenge, an answer that speaks powerfully to our time: Le Chayim. Choose life!
--Dr. Marilyn Dexheimer Lawrence, author of Trail Rides with Tequila: A Journey of Faith (Impact Christian Books, 2006) and Love, Dad (Christian Faith Publishing, 2019.)
This wise and beautiful book deals with issues we rarely pause to explore: responsibility, moral obligation, the core of our humanity, and the quest for meaning. Looking Always is about striving to be the best version of ourselves, extending generosity and kindness, love and forgiveness. These moral and interpersonal dilemmas are played out by deeply affecting protagonists who, while struggling, show friendship, love, and caring. The core issues of the book are manifested in the relationships between parents and children, siblings, spouses, and friends. These deeply moving relationships are intertwined with queries about evil and greed (e.g., drug cartels, the Holocaust). The protagonists’ deep commitment and compassion to the people they love, as well as their wisdom, are truly inspiring. I found myself not just “listening” while reading, but copying down some of their insights. I trust that, like me, other readers will be inspired by this generous and thought-provoking book.
--Dr. Pauline Erera, author of Family Diversity: Continuity and Change in the Contemporary Family (Sage, 2002).
In a masterful treatment of the aftershocks of trauma, Roger Roffman’s new novel, Looking Always, explores how the violence of the Holocaust reverberates down the generations. Few subjects are more topical or urgent given the resurgence in the U.S. of far-right ideologies that embrace Nazism. Roffman is deft in his interweaving of stories of family members whose relationships are frayed or sundered, inviting us to ask this essential question: are forgiveness and healing possible and if so, at what cost? In a tightly-plotted narrative full of surprises, he proposes some answers. Drawing on his own experience as a social worker and therapist, Roffman sounds out the secrets of the human heart in a beautiful novel of immense sensitivity and compassion.
--Dr. Carol A. Mossman, author of Writing with a Vengeance: The Countess de Chabrillan’s Rise from Prostitution (University of Toronto Press, 2009); Politics and Narratives of Birth Gynocolonization from Rousseau to Zola (Cambridge University Press, 1993); The Narrative Matrix: Stendhal’s Le Rouge et Le Noir (French Forum, 1984.)
