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This trial lawyer turned novelist must have taken to heart the creative writing lesson on starting a novel with an arresting scene. By page eight. a rich, influential, Jewish philanthropic Chicago socialite has a German Luger pistol thrust against his forehead at a gala opera opening, by an elderly fellow Jew. Ben Solomon, a survivor of the Holocaust, claims that Eliot Rozenzweig is really the adoptive brother that he grew up with in wartime Poland and claims that he became a Hauptscharfuhrer, the most senior rank in the notorious SS, who condemned his adoptive family to the death camps, and later came to America under false pretences, with stolen riches.
The weak central premise of this story is that an insecure troubled lawyer employed in a big corporate law firm would sacrifice hundreds of hours of billable time and eventually her career to listen to and try to verify the heart-wrenching autobiography of an aging and eccentric Polish Jew. This is a bit tenuous, but the lawyer and the reader are eventually equally caught up in his sad life story as it slowly unfolds, until they both want him to succeed in exposing the ex-Nazi for what he is and what he did in the past. Or is the Jewish pillar of Chicago society a victim of misidentification by a delusional vindictive old man? -a realistic possibility- he displays a tattoo showing that he was a Jewish survivor of the Nazi concentration camps.
There is at least one factual error. Hundreds of German V-1 rockets did bomb southeastern England in 1944, contrary to the assertion by Ben Solomon that the launch sites were all destroyed by the Allies before any could be launched. But this assertion is certainly permissible in a work of fiction. Readers who recognize this factual error may just be made more sceptical about other parts of his tale by this recognition.
There are tender moments of romance as Solomon recounts his long-lasting love for his doomed bride, Hannah, whom Otto, her childhood playmate, sends to Auschwitz; and the insecure lawyer finally accepts the love of her private investigator who has himself denied his love for her for years.
My favourite quote (from Ben Solomon): “We like to think we’re beyond such hatred, but…. Find a reason to turn your nose up at a culture, to denigrate a people because they are different, and its not such a giant leap from ethnic subjugation to ethnic slaughter.” Donald Trump fans, are you listening?
This is a first novel by Ronald Balson, It has been favourably compared to the legal thrillers of John Grisham, another trial lawyer turned novelist, but is very different, and to Kristen Hannah’s The Nightingale. He has done a great job of educating readers in the intricacies of the U.S. judicial system with a complex story that explores the full range of human experience from unbelievable acts of depravity to noble acts of selfless love.
Strongly recommended. I am on the lookout for any of the five novels Balson has published since 2013. But his law practice must be suffering.
The Passionate Reader 