One of my Favorite Stories: The Bet by Anton Chekov

What is it about Anton Chekov's story The Bet that gives it such force? From my first reading to the present it never fails to impress me. At the beginning we're given the impression that this story is about which form of punishment is more humane, the death penalty or life imprisonment. It ends by asking what makes a life worth living in the first place. How Chekov accomplishes this in a few thousand words is a powerful achievement.

The Bet

It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down his study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party one autumn evening. There had been many clever men there, and there had been interesting conversations. Among other things they had talked of capital punishment. The majority of the guests, among whom were many journalists and intellectual men, disapproved of the death penalty. They considered that form of punishment out of date, immoral, and unsuitable for Christian States. In the opinion of some of them the death penalty ought to be replaced everywhere by imprisonment for life. "I don't agree with you," said their host the banker. "I have not tried either the death penalty or imprisonment for life, but if one may judge a priori, the death penalty is more moral and more humane than imprisonment for life. Capital punishment kills a man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. Which executioner is the more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out of you in the course of many years?"

"Both are equally immoral," observed one of the guests, "for they both have the same object - to take away life. The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to."

Among the guests was a young lawyer, a young man of five-and-twenty. When he was asked his opinion, he said:

"The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral, but if I had to choose between the death penalty and imprisonment for life, I would certainly choose the second. To live anyhow is better than not at all."

A lively discussion arose. The banker, who was younger and more nervous in those days, was suddenly carried away by excitement; he struck the table with his fist and shouted at the young man:

"It's not true! I'll bet you two million you wouldn't stay in solitary confinement for five years."

"If you mean that in earnest," said the young man, "I'll take the bet, but I would stay not five but fifteen years."

"Fifteen? Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two million!"

"Agreed! You stake your millions and I stake my freedom!" said the young man.

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Patra McSharry Sevastiades, Co-Author of Grace Unbound part 2

March 9, 2026 press conference in Chicago.

This is part two of my Interview with Patra McSharry Sevastiades. In the second half of our conversation, co-author Patra Sevastiades reflects on the craft behind the book—how raw material became a compelling narrative, how structure and storytelling choices were made, and what it meant to shape another person’s deeply personal story with care, discipline, and trust.

 EN: I've collaborated with authors on two books. Each had important and fascinating stories but needed a lot of editing, which was my role. What was the process of your book project as co-author with Fr. Demetrius? 

Patra: What I brought to this project was a facility for writing and for editing.

Here’s the back story. My late husband, Fr. Philemon Sevastiades, had heard that

Fr. Demetri had met a man on death row, Andrew Kokoraleis, and had attempted to save his life. My late husband recommended that that Bishop Demetri write a book about the Orthodox Christian perspective on the death penalty and even developed a book outline. But he died in 2004 so that book never came to be.

Perhaps fifteen years later, the bishop asked a different priest to write a similar book, and the bishop asked me to edit it. I read it and I marked it up. I did not think it would appeal to a general audience. But what was gripping in the 300 pages of manuscript were the little stories that popped up. One, two, or three narrative paragraphs might show up in a given chapter. So I suggested a new approach: focus on the stories and allow narrative to drive the book. We pretty much wrote a completely new manuscript.

One thing we agreed to from the start: we wanted the book to appeal to the general reader, not someone steeped in church history or theology or even spiritual topics.

Second, we found a good process. His Grace talked about things—he is a natural storyteller with an excellent memory—and I took a stab at writing it down, for instance, a given scene or event that he described. I would build in many options (asking him to choose among 3 or 4 adjectives or verbs or to suggest a different one) and I would build in questions. How did that feel? Why did you do that? How did another person look/sound? This would open up a larger conversation. I would understand more, and that would be entrusted to the page as well. 

We would go over a section again and again until we got it right. I remember one time we spent 45 minutes—or maybe it was three hours!—talking about one verb! A lot of the book had to do with crisis points in the lives of either the bishop or the people to whom he was ministering, so we were very careful about details and language. We developed an outstanding process of dialogue and a trust between ourselves. Let me add that a question often brought up other stories or clarifications that were themselves quite interesting. In this way, the book bloomed in front of us.

Third, the story also involved a great deal of contextual research. My husband, Dean Casperson, suggested that we add background about HIV/AIDS, since a lot of people probably don’t know that story. He was right. I also needed information about the death penalty, in Illinois and in the United States. In the end, I took out subscriptions to newspaper archives to research events and people, and that research was then woven into the text.

“I was afraid the book was going to be a ‘church’ book,” admitted Politico journalist Shia Kapos when she recently interviewed Bishop Demetrios in Chicago. “But it wasn’t, it was written in a journalistic way.” When I heard her say that, I was relieved that our approach—combining personal narrative and research—had been deemed successful by a journalist.

Beyond the book itself, I did a great deal of research on how to write a great book proposal. I did research on how to write sales copy for the back of the book. I did research on how best to tell a story. I researched literary agents. I submitted 24 book proposals, all of which yielded a no or a non-response. I kept improving the book proposal each time before I sent it to a new agent. But the 25^th book proposal, the one that had all the magic ingredients in just the right measure, was the one that landed us an agent. A month later, we had a publisher.

EN: A lot of editorial decisions go into the structure of a story like this. I believe I understand the motivation for beginning with the grisly details of the "Ripper Crew" murders. It is palpably gripping. But it also takes place years after the story of Bob, the man with AIDS. How was the interweaving of stories decided?

Patra: The overall arc of the book is about Andrew and the death penalty in Illinois because the story occurred across twelve years, and there was a great deal of storytelling about what happened in the state.

Once we made that decision, then we had to say, what do we do with everything else? The story about the AIDS pandemic had fewer details to address; the volume of information would fill less space. If you have two stories, and one is longer than the other, what do you do? Make it chronological? Or open with a dramatic scene that is out of chronological sequence? Sometimes the two timelines overlapped—what then?

And of course, you need drama right off the bat. One of the most dramatic things was the question of whether a man named Andrew was going to be executed or not, and we needed the reader to care about Andrew and about the priest visiting him, Fr. Demetri. We wanted to leave readers wondering, chapter by chapter, What’s going to happen?

The architecture of the book is something we wrestled with. A lot of my time was spent not on writing, but on thinking about the structure and moving things around, thinking, would this work, would that work? Might something else work? You will have to tell us if we succeeded!

We decided to include the story of Demetri, the teenage boy who becomes a priest (and later a bishop) despite his family’s disapproval. His calling to the priesthood was a reminder of the timeless, transcendent quality of some aspects of tradition that are not “logical” but are deeply reassuring. This also allowed the reader to see the bishop as a vulnerable, flawed, relatable person. Following Demetri’s personal spiritual journey and tying that journey into the chapters about HIV/AIDS would allow the book to feel balanced: Andrew and the death penalty in one chapter, HIV/AIDS and Demetri’s spiritual journey in the other, alternating, a 50/50 treatment.

Just when we thought we were done, our editor said, You need to add a final chapter; the action in the book ends in 2011, and you need to update the reader. This was a surprise, a demand that, in the end, pushed open another door, one that allowed readers to walk with the bishop through the most painful passage of his life, when everything fell apart. But what else could we do?

We wrote the new chapter. It was challenging, painful for the bishop to recount. It wasn't until we were almost finished with that chapter that I suddenly gasped the deeper point of the book. It showed up at two crucial moments early in the book, and again in the closing scene. The writing of the book had clarified the meaning of Demetri’s calling to the priesthood; even the painful passage of his life glowed with a meaningful brightness.

And then he wrote the pithy epilogue that he'd always dreamed of writing. 
Throughout, there was always a back and forth, an interplay of good ideas and shared effort. I know that the writing was improved by having two minds weighing in on it.

EN: A book project like this is a major time commitment. What prompted you to make that commitment, to tell someone else's story from start to finished publication?

Patra: I loved the idea that I would get to finish the project that my late husband had suggested. The book was quite different from what he originally proposed, but that connection was still very meaningful.

I had retired from the Duluth Library Foundation, and the challenge appealed to me. It was also paid work, so that helped!

In the end, it took about three years to write a compelling book proposal (with a gripping letter to an agent, three solid chapters, good sales copy, and a good argument about why it would sell), find an agent, find an editor, then finish writing the book.

Story is important, but the person behind the story is even more important. Grace Unbound was somebody else’s story, not mine, and it was important to respect that. It had to be told from the bishop’s perspective and how he experienced it; he would live with the consequences of the book in a very immediate sense. As for me, I wanted to be proud of the work that I was doing, and I wanted His Grace to feel that his story was accurately reflected. I heard a lot of personal stories. Some of them ended up in the book. Some of them didn't. But when you share that much about yourself, you get to know someone pretty well. We came to trust each other, and that was also meaningful. In talking to our agent and talking to our editor, we would always refer to one another to make sure that we were always speaking as one and backing each other up. We had a very strong sense of teamwork. This mutual respect was very special.

It was a great honor to work on this book with Bishop Demetrios.

To purchase Grace Unbound, you can ask your local bookstore to order it, or find it online here at Amazon.com.

Read a book review here: 

Grace Unbound: Memoir of an Orthodox Bishop Who Takes the Roads Not Taken

Illustration: Susan Jessico