About The Book

Meet an upstart who disarms his wealthy parents by taking in a homeless man (he is robbed, of course); who receives accolades for teaching illiterates to read and write but gets run out of town for telling them about Jesus as well. Meet a revolutionary who spends his last savings on a night at the opera, only to disrupt the performance; a zealot whose habit of exposing hypocrisy in high places lands him behind bars. Meet a visionary who inspires ardor but refuses to accept followers; a counselor who turns souls toward Christ by turning lives upside down. He’s a failure by most standards, and yet his memory still challenges and inspires. Meet Rachoff.

Der Fall Rachoff (“The Case of Rachoff ”) was first published by the Furche Verlag, Berlin, in 1919. This imaginative story was inspired by the life of Vasily Osipovich Rakhov (born ca. 1861), who wandered through Russia serving the poor and was imprisoned for eight years in the Suzdal Monastery. Accounts of the historical Rakhov’s death vary.