The following are reviews of self-published titles that have previously appeared in PW
Fiction An Enemy Like Me Teri M. Brown. Atmosphere, $18.99 trade paper (328p) ISBN 978-1-63988-545-9
A German American’s decision to enlist in the Army during WWII impacts his family for multiple generations in the stimulating if uneven latest from Brown (Sunflowers Beneath the Snow). Jacob Miller is raised by his German immigrant parents in New Berlin, Ohio, where he starts a family in the 1930s with his wife, Bonnie. When their son, William, is nearly four, Jacob enlists, determined to fight fascism and show his allegiance to the U.S. Though reluctant to leave Bonnie and William, Jacob fears it would be worse to stay, especially after a friend is arrested under suspicion of sympathizing with the Nazis and placed in an internment camp. The narrative alternates between Jacob’s nerve-wracking combat experience (an evocative scene describes him awaiting German fire while hiding in a foxhole) and young William’s fear that he might have to become man of the house if Jacob doesn’t return. In the present-day framing device, set several years after Jacob’s death, William recalls his mother’s pain at being separated from his father and how the war made Jacob emotionally distant, an effect William struggles against repeating with his own children. Though the plot skews melodramatic and draws obvious parallels between father and son, Brown offers a wellrounded portrait of German American life during the period. Fans of WWII fiction will want to check this out.
Max’s War: The Story of a Ritchie Boy Libby Fischer Hellmann. Red Herring, $7.99 e-book (411p) ISBN 979-8-9892530-0-5
In this meticulously researched historical thriller, Hellmann (the Georgia Davis series) follows Jewish teen Max Steiner from Europe to America and back again as he lives through the horrors of WWII. In 1932 Regensburg, Germany, schoolboy Max observes the seeds of Nazism beginning to take root across the country. He flees with his family to Holland in 1936. Four years later, when Hitler invades the Netherlands, Max leaves his family for the U.S., where he lands in Chicago. Shortly after he arrives, Max gets word his parents have been killed by the Nazis, so he enlists in the U.S. Army to avenge their deaths. In 1942, he’s assigned to Camp Ritchie, a secret training site in rural Maryland near the Pennsylvania border. There, Max and his fellow Germanspeaking U.S. soldiers are trained in the art of interrogation, counterintelligence, and psychological warfare, skills that Max taps into when he’s deployed overseas to interrogate German POWs and go undercover in occupied territories. Meanwhile, he nurses a crush on a girl he met in Holland before the war began. Hellman expertly marries heaps of historical detail with a thoughtful illustration of the dangers of nationalism. This ranks with the author’s best work.
The Piano Bench Ralph Webster. Ralph Webster, $9.99 e-book (432p) ISBN 979-8-8396-3049-9
Webster (The Other Mrs. Samson) chronicles in his intriguing if meandering latest the life and times of a German Jewish doctor who becomes an “unintended bigamist.” In the frame story, Josef Samson, 82, lives in 1962 New York City with his third wife, Kaethe. Over the course of the narrative, he recounts in admittedly “long-winded” terms how the two came to be together and the secrets he’s kept since the “golden” interwar years of his native Berlin. In 1912, he marries a distant cousin named Hilda and is devastated when she and their unborn child die from a fall three years later. More than a decade passes before he meets and marries a sculptor named Inge, though his mother’s disapproval of Inge, who’s not Jewish, causes the couple to drift apart. In 1928, Josef begins an affair with his mother’s 18-year-old caretaker, Kaethe. Rather than seek a divorce from Inge, Josef leaves for Paris in 1933 and Kaethe, who doesn’t know he’s married, joins him shortly after. Though Josef’s narration is laden with exposition and repetitive self-justification, Webster pulls off a dramatic account of the couple’s topsy-turvy lives during WWII: interned in 1939 France due to their German background, they’re released following the 1940 German invasion, get married, and flee to the U.S. after the Nazis begin rounding up Jews. Historical fiction fans will delight in this poignant saga.