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In pre-war Brooklyn, a young, German ex-patriate college
student is coerced by the German-American Bund into going
back to Germany, which he left with his parents at age three
as they sought refuge in the U.S. Using a staged, sexual encounter
with a beautiful girl, he is blackmailed into returning to
Germany. For the next seven years, he is treated well and
is absorbed into the new, Nazi society where attempts are
made to undo his American beliefs. He earns a doctorate in
electrical engineering and is inducted into the Wehrmact as
war breaks out. He serves on the Russian front with distinction
and rescues a group of Jews at great peril to himself. He
is transferred to work on the vengeance missiles as the war
ends.
Reunited with his family in the U.S., he patents a semiconductor
device and moves to California where he starts a company which
is an immediate success. As the years go by, now in middle
age, he is suddenly confronted by a group of business sharks
which hope to overthrow his hold on the company. They accuse
him of having been a Nazi and a war criminal. Charges are
lodged and a pre-trial hearing takes place. At the last minute,
he is exonerated by a group of Jews who bear witness to his
heroism in having saved scores of them during the war. His
plight and ultimate rescue is brought about by the surfacing
of an oddly shaped ring which had been given to him as a gift
by one of the victims years before.
The Mordecai Ring has the thread of unrequited love running
throughout the decades which is finally satisfied when he
is reunited with his first, teenage love. The book reflects
the violence and inhumanity of the Nazi regime and legitimizes
deceit, cunning and deviousness used by a young, American
thrown suddenly into a lawless society. It is a study in contrasts
as his thoughts see-saw from baseball and Coney Island to
the Fuhrer and his perfect Germany where Jews and other non-Germans
are treated with disdain and hatred. |
