Eli's Promise

July 1, 2020
Balson returns to the subject of his first three historical novels: Holocaust survivors and the stories of their lives during and after the war. Focusing on Eli Rosen, a Polish brickyard owner, Balson moves the narrative back and forth between Lublin, Poland, during the German occupation; an American-run displaced-persons camp in Germany immediately after the war; and the Albany Park neighborhood in northwest Chicago in the mid-sixties. With the self-serving help of a scurrilous war profiteer, Max Poleski, Eli is able to keep his family, including wife Esther and son Isaac, out of the camps until, inevitably, Max betrays him. We know that Eli and Isaac survive, but, like them, we remain in suspense as to the fate of Esther. As Eli searches for his wife among the one million displaced persons in Europe, he also tracks Max, determined to bring him to justice. Max's trail leads to Chicago, where crooked politicians are deep into another war-profiteering scheme, this time involving Vietnam. Balson juggles between his three stories effectively, writing with great emotion but without overt melodrama, always aware of the tragic ways in which history repeats itself.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2020

In 1939, Eli Rosen and his father Jakob operate a construction firm in Lublin, Poland, respected by all. Then the Germans invade and life grows steadily hellish. Years before, they'd hired Maximilian "Max" Poleski, giving him a job when he sorely needed one. Now it's his turn, a non-Jew with connections to the invaders, to help them. This book is about Max's treachery and Eli's search to find him and make him pay for it. The chapters shuttle among three times and places: 1939-41, Lublin: Max's betrayal of the Rosens and the Rosens' disappearance into the camps; 1945-47, various displaced-person camps, Eli's survival and hunt for Max; 1965-66, Chicago, the same quest 20 years later, entwined with the tale of a corrupt congressman. Terrible things happen but somehow never feel quite real: The characters don't have texture. The Nazi villains are monstrous and Max is a monster, but the Americans, bad and good guys both, are cardboard and the plot in this section of the book veers steadily toward melodrama. VERDICT Balson (The Girl from Berlin) has written on this subject with success, but this time, it doesn't come off. [See Prepub Alert, 3/18/20.]--David Keymer, Cleveland

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