ELI’S PROMISE: REVIEW

But there is power in the telling, and as I said, the examination of how there are always some who ruthlessly exploit the misery of others for gain is sobering, especially now. (Review by Margaret von Klemperer)

Ronald H Balson scored a big international hit with Once We Were Brothers, and with Eli’s Promise he returns to the theme of the Second World War, starting in Nazi-occupied Poland, moving on to a camp for displaced persons in the American zone of post-war Germany, and then to Chicago during the Vietnam war. And besides the main character – Eli – the linking theme is profiteering. It is something that resonates as the world now battles with the Covid pandemic and the inevitable shenanigans that are going on over procurement of PPE and vaccines.

We first meet Eli Rosen in Lublin in Poland, where he, his wife Esther and their young son live. Eli manages the family’s brickyard, which the Nazis see as important to their war effort, so, at least for a time, he escapes the ghetto and continues to work, although the business falls into the non-Jewish hands of Max Poleski, one of his sales team, who claims he will work with the Nazis to keep Eli’s family safe.

But, of course, things are complicated, and while Balson shows little of the horrors of the concentration camps, in the second section of the story, Eli and his son are among the displaced, desperately trying to find out what happened to Esther, hoping to get a visa for the United States and trying to combat a profiteer who is peddling visas and cheating desperate people. And who Eli is convinced is Max, the same man he knew in Lublin.

The final twist to the plot sees Eli in America in 1965, still searching for the truth about Esther, and still on the trail of Max, who, Eli believes, has moved his profiteering activities to a new theatre of war.

Moving between the three time frames makes the book feel jerky, and even rushed in places, and there were moments, particularly in the parts set in Chicago, where I found the characterisation a little obvious – shades of grey were in short supply. But there is power in the telling, and as I said, the examination of how there are always some who ruthlessly exploit the misery of others for gain is sobering, especially now.

Eli’s Promise is published by St Martin’s Press. ISBN: 9781250271464 - Margaret von Klemperer