He’s no stranger to the craft of writing — but he didn’t really expect his first short story, penned more than five years ago, to eventually become his first novel. Let alone his first published novel.

However, that’s just what has happened for Joseph Lerner, dean emeritus of the College of Arts and Sciences, who will be signing copies of his novel, Coal Fire, from 1 to 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 25, at BookWorks on the Cookeville Square.

A brand-new release from Florida Literary Foundation Press, Coal Fire is available at BookWorks and online at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

With a doctorate in biochemistry, Lerner had written numerous scientific articles for publication, but had explored little fiction writing until a friend on the English faculty encouraged him to pursue that style.

The result is Coal Fire, a fictional coming-of-age story of Sidney Gerstein, a Jewish boy growing up in a Christian coal-mining town in Northeastern Pennsylvania in the 1950s who searches for the meaning of life, nature of God and the essence of his ethnic heritage and Jewish identity.