Dental News - Periodontist, implantologist, entrepreneur

Robert Selleck, DTA

Wed. 7 August 2013

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Alan Winter, DDS, FACD, always wanted to be a dentist. But throughout his 30-plus-year career, he hasn’t let that get in the way of his love for history and writing. Instead of taking a more traditional route and pursuing a biological sciences degree prior to dental school, Winter earned a history degree, graduating from Rutgers with honors and earning a fellowship nomination.

But dental school beckoned, so he declined the fellowship and studied dentistry at NYU and Columbia before ultimately founding his periodontal and implantology practice in Manhattan, which continues as his primary work today.

While turnng his practice into a thriving business, Winter started the dental journal Periodontal Case Reports, wrote two novels and helped start Expert Dental CE, an online learning community that’s centered on providing continuing education and other support to dental professionals throughout the world.

And in June, his third novel, “Savior’s Day,” was published. The suspense thriller, rooted in historical fact, is available through major booksellers, including www.amazon.com, where it can be bought as a hardback, paperback or e-book.

The book was more than 40 years in the making — not because of Winter’s abundance of other commitments and interests — but because that’s how long he had ideas for the story bouncing around in his head before he finally realized the perfect way to present it.

Interestingly, while the book has nothing to do with dentistry, the evolution of the story’s central theme is rooted directly in Winter’s dental practice, where a friendship began with one of his patients, Hayim Tawil.

As the two became more aware of each others’ interests, Tawil, a highly regarded biblical scholar and theological seminary instructor, shared with Winter his expansive knowledge about the Codex of Aleppo, the oldest known version of the Bible in book form (versus a scroll).

At the time, MasterMedia had just published Winter’s first book, “Someone Else’s Son,” and that led Tawil to ask Winter about collaborating on a book about the Codex of Aleppo. Winter was intrigued, and the two met weekly on the project for the next two years.

Winter's first effort with the material was to present the epic story, filled with 1,000 years of conflict and mystery, as a work of historical fiction. But Winter wasn’t satisfied with the result, so he recast it as a nonfiction history book. That caught the attention of an agent interested in representing the project. But the agent, nervous about Tawil not being able to write in English and Winter being a dentist, not a professional writer, balked at the idea of Tawil and Winter as authors — despite Winter’s history degree and previous books. So the project stalled.

Throughout that time, another book was rolling around in Winter’s thoughts, inspired by a single sentence in a book he read while attending Rutgers. The book’s overall theme about African American Jews intrigued Winter. But what really grabbed his attention was a single sentence that suggested the possibility that Arnold Ford, the music director for the founder of Temple B’nai Abraham in Harlem, was also W.D. Fard, who founded the Black Muslims in Detroit.

Ultimately, that single sentence twisted together in Winter's thoughts with the Codex of Aleppo, and Winter realized the two could be woven into one sweeping tale touching on timeless themes and today’s headlines involving Christianity, Judaism, Islamism — and mankind's shared dreams.

“Savior’s Day,” 346 pages of suspense and engaging history, is the result.

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