Fireflies

<I>Fireflies</I> is a modern rendering of Moby Dick with most of the prominent characters and incidents from that work included though somewhat transformed. Ahab and Ishmael have become two Jewish sisters from Brooklyn: Queequeg a reformed Harlem drug dealer and Pip a deaf Indonesian dancer. Starbuck Flask Stubb and even Bulkington Feddalah and Father Mapple are all here to partake in this adventure.</p><p>But whereas Ahab strikes out in rage at a malevolent cosmos symbolized by the white whale that crippled him Maggie's instinct is to channel her wrath at fate's apparent hostility into creating The White Elephant a pure theater in which the vast wisdom of the past might once more flower. Her relentless pursuit brings a dark victory enabling her to impose her own ephemeral order on one small corner of an otherwise enigmatic universe.</p><p>As did its famous precursor this novel ponders those profound questions that so troubled Melville while affirming once again that the greatest adventure has always been the exploration of the possible.</p>