Where does Innocent Suffering come from? Does God use it to test our faith? Or is it so random that even a Divine Being does not know when it will strike? These are the questions at the center of the personal conflict within Jude Priore, an aviation defense counsel who has just been dispatched to enter the cabin of a 767 that has been attacked on the tarmac of Islamabad International Airport. Dressed in Mission Security Company uniforms, five terrorists had decided to keep the arms shipments on schedule and took over a 767 sitting on the ground preparing for departure. Two hundred thirty passengers aboard get in the way, and executions ensue. As Priore inventories the vestiges of the terror aboard the aircraft, the question mark hooking his soul leads him to a logical extension of the calamity: If God is All Knowing, then shouldn't He foresee and be able to stop incomprehensible affliction? Can Omniscience be attributed - or "imputed" - to God? Priore's skepticism over God's Omniscience finds its genesis in the real story of Job, deeper than the typical "Job" metaphor for restoring faith. The key to Job's demise was turned when "The Satan" - a regal member of God's celestial court - persuaded God to test and tempt Job. The temptation- of God, not man -empowered evil to possess an unlimited right of passage into man's spiritual architecture and thus was God's power compromised. The turbulence within Priore's shaken belief system converges with a storm of wariness that begins to emerge in the immediate aftermath of the Islamabad hijacking, when the chief cabin crewmember, Teema Allaire, grabs Priore's arm and beseechingly says to him, Find them, Find them all! Priore hears Teema's desperate cry reverberating in his mind even as he visits a special sanctuary, Sacred Heart Cathedral in Newark, New Jersey. There, not only is his waning faith cross-examined, but the stained-glass windows also reveal clues that raise certain suspicions about how the terrorist attack may have been staged with false airport security. What he cannot see, however, is that he is sitting squarely in the cross hairs of a revenge plot against him, being accused of having known from the outset of the hijacking that highly touted security may have been a ruse. In an ironic twist of more than fate, while Priore "imputes" omniscience to God (shouldn't God know? If not Him, then who?), the incendiary knowledge about the hijacking is imputed to him, leaving his soul undermined by skepticism and his career stranded by perceptions rather than facts. Imputed Knowledge is the chronicle of a "thinking" faith, a Faith that challenges doubt rather than avoids the difficult questions that Reason simply cannot answer. Kirkus Review, March 6, 2014: "In De Vivo's debut novel, a brutal hijacking prompts a man to search his soul and reinvestigate his faith...The tragedy evokes a crisis of faith in Priore, and De Vivo, with considerable skill, plays this against the investigation into the identity, history and current whereabouts of the hijackers. The author expands his story to include a large cast of well-drawn, international characters, and he later weaves a subplot about corporate machinations into his main hijacking story, but Priore's turmoil is the main attraction here...a well-done procedural thriller, mapped on top of a searching exploration of philosophical issues." An intelligent, gripping thriller about the deeper implications of a tragedy."
About the Author: Edward holds Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in Philosophy from New York University and a Law Degree from the University of Notre Dame. In this debut novel, philosophy and law converge through difficult questions about faith, questions that logic cannot answer. At the centerpiece of the work is the question, If God is Omniscient, then why is there so much innocent suffering in the world? As De Vivo's main character (Priore) poses, perhaps God, in His mercy, wants to arrest insidious diseases and other calamities delivered upon the Innocent but He cannot do so. Priore contends that God may have compromised His Omniscience and Power when He accepted the proposal of a regal member of His own celestial court, The Satan. Before any associations with diabolical evil, "The Satan" was an honorable title held by God's virtual prosecutor, who chides God to test the biblical Job's faith by delivering a series of hardships on him. When God accepted the indecent proposal, Priore asks, did He yield Omniscience and gain an equal in The Satan? If so, then was the genesis of "original" sin the temptation of God rather than the temptation of man? The turbulence within Priore's shaken belief system rises up from the depths of his doubting soul in the immediate aftermath of a hijacking of a 767 at Islamabad International Airport. Priore is immediately dispatched to yet another site riddled with catastrophe and innocent suffering where the chief cabin crewmember (Teema Allaire) beseeches the airline's defense counsel to Find them, Find them all! Priore hears Teema's desperate cry reverberating in his mind even as he visits a special sanctuary, Sacred Heart Cathedral in Newark, New Jersey. There, not only is his waning faith cross-examined, but the stained-glass windows also reveal clues that raise certain suspicions about how the terrorist attack may have been staged with false airport security. What he can't see, however, is that he is sitting squarely in the cross hairs of a revenge plot against him, being accused of having known from the outset of the hijacking that highly touted security was a ruse. While Priore "imputes" omniscience to God, the incendiary knowledge about the hijacking is imputed to him, leaving his soul undermined by skepticism and his career stranded by perceptions rather than facts. Imputed Knowledge is the chronicle of what Pope John Paul II called a "thinking" faith, a faith that must confront the difficult questions that Reason simply cannot answer.