Gretl Keren Fischer (1919- ) was born in Olomouc, Czechoslovakia. She spent 12 years in London, England, including during the Second World War, and came to Canada in 1951, earning degrees in English literature at the University of British Columbia and Carleton University, where she taught for many years, and a Ph.D. from McGill University. The author of "An Answer for Pierre" (1999, Borealis) has occasionally published short stories, poems and literary criticism.

Are good and evil, right and wrong, merely human inventions dependent on individual or cultural preference? Is there nothing in the cosmos that can objectively arbitrate between conflicting points of view? G.K. Fischer, writing from the perspective of religious naturalism, demonstrates that the fundamental ethic taught by great religions expresses the same ethical laws that rise from the depth of the cosmos.

With help of basic teachings gleaned from contemporary mainstream science, Dr. Fischer shows that cosmic energy has a built-in bias in favour of life and well-being. Whenever pain appears, it is the sign that evil has taken place. For this reason the cosmic ethic is independent from what humans in their various cultures have been taught in their youth. This ethical bias, expressed with clarity and strength, directs us to accept a valid standard by which good and evil, right and wrong, may be differentiated.

The question has to be: Is this productive of well-being or is it productive of pain? The answer will be a reliable guide for our decisions.

This is the story of a man who, in the turmoil of our time, seeks to renew his spiritual moorings. Jacob Harald cannot accept the idea (so widespread at the close of the millennium) that objectively seen, nothing is either good or evil, and that to call things right or wrong is just a matter of social custom or individual preference. When he is confronted with fathomless corruption, he is driven to search for an ethical standard beyond the human. He looks to the new science for help. Can it be reconciled with his Jewish faith? Can it be that a powerful ethical imperative rises from the very depth of the cosmos? We see JacobÕs struggle against a background of human relationships: his marriage, the alienation of his children, and his harrowing friendship with the enigmatic Pierre, who sends him on the most desperate quest of this life.