A Bug's Life 2.0 Rebecca Miller Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2012, $26.00, pp.337 Jacob’s Folly is the fantastically original story of three people whose lives intersect and echo across time. What does a wily Jewish peddler in 18th-century Paris have to do with two contemporary Long Islanders, one a heroic firefighter devoted to his family, the other a beguiling teenage girl who runs away from her ultra-Orthodox home and traditions to pursue an acting career? As the novel begins, Jacob, who died in Paris in 1773, comes to consciousness, wondering if he has been transformed into an angel: “I reveled at having been chosen, against all odds, to be part of the heavenly host. I yearned to admire myself—or better, to be admired. I knew I must be very beautiful. I flapped my wings, spreading them wide,...

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