The Road Less Taken

Theodore Jerome Cohen's first serious attempt to write a short story for publication was in 1962 while he was working in Antarctica. The story he penned--about a man killed by a pod of orcas--was lost during his return to the United States. It wasn't until 2009, when he resurrected the tale and incorporated it in his post-modern novel, Frozen in Time: Murder at the Bottom of the World, that the horror of the episode, which was based on a real encounter by three Chilean Army enlisted men with a pod of orcas, appeared in print. Time did not dim the horror of what happened at sea that day.

It’s their stories he wants to share with you in this book. Here, you’ll find unusual stories about a violinist and his wife who escaped the death camp at Treblinka, about a man who, because of his impatience, interrupted a meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill, and De Gaulle, and about a young woman’s descent into the darkness of schizophrenia—stories vividly brought to life in this, the second collection of short stories by Theodore Jerome Cohen.