From the author of the Richard and Judy best seller The Private Lives of Pippa Lee comes a brilliantly original novel about desire, faith, love, acting ' and reincarnation. In 18th-century Paris, Jacob Cerf is a Jew, a peddler of knives, saltcellars, and snuffboxes. Despite a disastrous teenage marriage, he is determined to raise himself up in life, by whatever means he can.

More than 200 years later, Jacob is amazed to find himself reincarnated as a 'y in the Long Island suburbs of 21st-century America, his new life twisted in ways he could never have imagined. But even the tiniest of insects can influence the turning of the world, and thanks to his arrival, the lives of a reliable volunteer fireman and a young Orthodox Jewish woman nursing a secret ambition will never be the same.

Through her wonderfully memorable protagonist, Rebecca Miller considers the hold of the past on the present, the power of private hopes and dreams, and the collision of fate and free will. InJacob's Folly, Miller's world - which is our own, transfigured by her clear gaze and by her sharp, surprising wit - comes spectacularly to life.

Rebecca Miller is the author of the short-story collection Personal Velocity, her feature-film adaptation of which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, which she also adapted for the screen. Her other films include Angela and The Ballad of Jack and Rose. She is married to the actor Daniel Day Lewis and lives in New York and Ireland.