Shattered Mosaic: A father's search for proof in a world of faith

He promised his nine-year-old daughter he would protect her forever.

Three weeks later, she was dead-and the entire architecture of Jacob Hinsen's life began to collapse.

A successful trial lawyer and Vietnam combat veteran, Jacob has spent his life examining evidence, exposing contradictions, and demanding the truth. But grief will not submit to cross-examination.

When friends and clergy assure him that his daughter Jessica is "with God," Jacob hears comfort-but not proof. Unable to accept that death has separated them forever, he leaves behind a fracturing marriage, a faltering law practice, and the people still trying to love him. His search carries him to Rome, Istanbul, and Jerusalem, where he questions Christianity, Islam, and Judaism about the promise each makes to the grieving: that those we love are not truly lost.

Yet every answer opens another question.

The Shattered Mosaic is not simply a journey through religion. It is the deeply human story of what grief does to the living-how it isolates, damages relationships, consumes purpose, and can make even love feel unreachable.

Readers walk beside Jacob through sorrow, doubt, anger, unexpected compassion, and the painful recognition that while he has been searching for the dead, the living have been struggling to survive without him.

Jacob may never find the certainty he demands. What he carries home may be something quieter-and perhaps more precious: the possibility that when proof is impossible, love, mercy, responsibility, and human connection can still give life meaning.

For anyone who has experienced loss, stood beside someone suffering, or wondered how to continue when the beliefs that once held life together no longer do.

A five-star Reedsy Discovery "Must Read."

"The bravest premise in contemporary literary fiction I have encountered in years."

-Fiza Pathan, award-winning author and educator

Literary Fiction

Metaphysical & Visionary

​Philosophical Fiction