Joel Bur­cat writes thrillers about envi­ron­men­tal issues. His lat­est book, how­ev­er, breaks that mold. Whiz Kid‑A Nov­el, writ­ten with his late father Dave, is his­tor­i­cal fic­tion set in South Philly in 1950 about a 25-year-old Jew­ish WW-II vet who is grap­pling with many things: what he will do after grad­u­at­ing from Penn, whether to become a strug­gling nov­el­ist or take a secure job and go into his friend’s adver­tis­ing firm, the rela­tion­ships with his col­lege friend Ilene and his preg­nant wife Deb­by, and his Judaism. He encoun­ters both overt and sub­tle anti­semitism and racism and must deal with those issues. Howard Langer, win­ner of the 2025 Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award (Book Clubs) has said of it: ​“Whiz Kid is a heart­felt his­tor­i­cal nov­el about iden­ti­ty and ambi­tion that recre­ates in vivid detail post-war Philadel­phia, par­tic­u­lar­ly post-war Jew­ish Philadel­phia and Cam­den. In this remark­able homage to his father Joel Bur­cat has fash­ioned a beau­ti­ful set­ting into which he has set the sparkling gem, the man­u­script of a nov­el that his father had left him…[A] lov­ing, beau­ti­ful work by his son.”

A grad­u­ate of The Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty and Ver­mont Law School, Joel Bur­cat has writ­ten short sto­ries for The Mon­tre­al Review, Kalei­do­scope, Diverse Voic­es Quar­ter­ly, the North­ern Appalachia Review, and antholo­gies, among oth­ers. Before becom­ing a full-time author, he was an envi­ron­men­tal lawyer. He worked as an Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al for the Pa. Dept. of Envi­ron­men­tal Resources and was in pri­vate prac­tice. His first three nov­els were envi­ron­men­tal legal thrillers, includ­ing Strange Fire, a thriller about frack­ing for nat­ur­al gas. Reap the Wind, his new cli­mate change nov­el about three lawyers flee­ing a hur­ri­cane hit­ting Hous­ton, is his fourth nov­el. He lives in Har­ris­burg, Penn­syl­va­nia. https://​joel​bur​cat​.com/