Lew's AUTHOR BLOG

***

Meticulously researched, A Flood of Evil is a comprehensive novel that takes the reader step by step through the events that lead to the Nazi party’s rise in Germany. Told through alternating points of view, one gets a personalized account of how humanity was driven to the utmost stage of barbarity.

Berthold is a young German boy, caught in the Nazi limelight when his fanatical brother is killed in Hitler’s failed Munich putsch. Anna is a fearless young Polish Jew who is just starting out in life as a reporter for a Yiddish paper that reports to the world.

Circumstances throw them together and the book begins with Berthold being tried at Nuremberg for war crimes. Anna testifies that he saved so many Jewish lives as well as her own and must not be condemned, that he is no more guilty than the countries who failed to save the Jewish population, knowing what was going on inside Germany.

Years later, the daughter of the prosecutor wants to know the whole story, and bit by bit, it is told through both Berthold’s and Anna’s eyes.

Weinstein shines in his ability to explain the mindset of the people living, the how’s and why’s of the rise of the Nazi party. He painstakingly recreates the life and times, the political climate and the people caught up in the coming conflagration. Why did they stay? Didn’t they see it coming?

Like Leon Uris in Exodus, Weinstein is able to place the reader in the 1930’s where they can see it through the character’s viewpoint and understanding, without sacrificing story lines. Powerful and compelling, this is a must-read that puts history into perspective with both realism and sensitivity.