Thursday, August 15, 2024

Review: The Decision by Karen A. Wyle


Genre: Historical Fiction

Description:

“It is autumn of 1938, in Hitler’s Germany, in the capital city of Berlin, perhaps a month before the devastating anti-Jewish violence of Kristallnacht. Three Jewish boys have received new bicycles — because their family has, with difficulty, arranged to leave Germany, and they will not be allowed to take much cash with them. Two of the boys are experienced bicyclists, but the youngest is less so. On a downtown street, the latter’s lack of skill causes an accident. And the traffic policeman on the scene wears, just visible under his uniform, the brown shirt of a member of Hitler's storm troopers.

What did the policeman do? The answer is known, because the preceding paragraph describes an actual event. But why did the policeman make the choice he did? What life did he live that led him to make it? And what happened to him, while the boys and their family escaped, lived, and thrived? This novel imagines possible answers to these questions. In doing so, it takes the reader into the heart of the experience of wartime, and the repercussions of such conflict for years thereafter.”

Author:

“Karen A. Wyle was born a Connecticut Yankee, but eventually settled in Bloomington, Indiana. She now considers herself a Hoosier. She is an appellate attorney, photographer, and mother of two.

Wyle's thoughtful and compassionate fiction includes SF, historical romance, and fantasy. She has also collaborated with several wonderful illustrators to produce picture books. Relying on her legal background, she has written one nonfiction resource, explaining American law to authors, law students, and anyone else interested in better understanding the legal landscape. Wyle's voice is the product of a lifetime spent reading both literary and genre fiction. Her personal history has led her to focus on often-intertwined themes of family, communication, the impossibility of controlling events, and the persistence of unfinished business.”

Appraisal:

I loved the premise of this book. People often wonder how someone like Hitler could rise to power and why people didn’t recognize the issues and push back. This book starts with the real story of a German policeman who kind of did push back in a subtle way and then imagines his back story, what led him to that point and where things might have gone from there. It makes for an extremely interesting story. This should get you thinking, both how you would react if you were in a situation like the policeman who is the book’s protagonist and how some things in the current world feel a bit too much like those times leading up to World War II. A good read that I’d highly recommend.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues.

Rating: ***** Five Star

Reviewed by: BigAl

Approximate word count: 75-80,000 words

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