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"Filled with passages which are laugh out loud funny and switching to passages which are poignant, all without missing a beat, Life, Death & Bialys is a warm human story of how two men found their way back to a mutually supportive relationship."- Bestsellersworld.com "If somebody told me they wrote a book about learning to bake bread with their curmudgeonly, dying father, I would have said, 'Break out the violins and wake me up when it's over.' But Dylan Schaffer has created something genuinely sharp and entertaining here. What a fantastic surprise." - Beth Lisik, author of Everybody in the Pool
“Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." ~Ford Madox Ford
I hate to admit it, but I’d never heard about this page 99 business before. I mean, I’ve read a little Ford Madox Ford, but his advice about turning to page 99 to find the essence of a book stuck me, initially, as a little weird. Then I tried it with my latest book, a memoir about how me and my dying father baked our way to truth and reconciliation, called Life, Death & Bialys: A Father/Son Baking Story. And let me tell you, FMF turns out to have been a freaking genius.
Here’s a bit from page 99:
“We walk outside and stand in front of the store eating. Cream cheese would be nice, but I can see how eating it dry is a purer bialy experience.
We hear someone with an English accent say to her friends, ‘It’s just like a bagel, but without the hole.’
Flip [my father] steps over and corrects her ...
Legal Work - Cases author has handled:
The San Francisco dog mauling case: We represent Marjorie Knoller, who was originally convicted of murder after her dog fatally attacked a woman in her apartment building in San Francisco.
The Gambino Family Prosecution: This was the case in which Sammy "the bull" Gravano switched sides and testified for the government.
The Repressed Memory Murder case: George Franklin, was accused by his daughter of having killed her best friend when she was eight years old. Franklin's daughter claimed to have repressed the memory for twenty years. It was the first and only murder case ever tried on a repressed memory theory.
The Mitchell Brothers Murder: We represented Jim Mitchell in the appeal from his conviction for killing his brother, Artie. The Mitchell Brothers are famous for having produced one of the first feature- length pornographic films.
The Billionaire Boys Club Case: We represented Ben Dosti, who was part of a group of young Beverly Hills men who reportedly kidnapped an Iranian business man for the purpose of extorting money from him.
The Boneyard Killer: We represented an elderly woman who was convicted of killing nine men in her boarding house in Sacramento California and burying them in her back yard.
