We are only ghosts

A gay Holocaust survivor confronts the man who both saved and broke him in the intense latest from Richards (after The Summer of Jenny Wade). In 1968 New York City, 42-year-old waiter Charles Ward recognizes a restaurant patron as Berthold Werden, a fugitive German paramilitary soldier from Auschwitz going by a different name. Charles has complicated feelings about Berthold, who enslaved Charles for sex and domestic service but also rescued him from being worked to death in the camp. Berthold, not recognizing Charles, invites him to dinner, and Charles accepts. During their evening together, Charles reveals who he is, and their sexual relationship reignites. The past, however, haunts Charles, and he debates whether he wants to see Berthold arrested for war crimes. In flashbacks, Richards tells Charles's wartime story in reverse chronology, starting with his time working at a bakery in small-town Germany during the collapse of the Nazi regime, then the torments of his imprisonment in Auschwitz with Berthold, and lastly his few, desperate months in the Terezin ghetto in 1941. The well-woven narrative conveys Charles's personal horrors of the Holocaust while delicately probing his messy entanglement with Berthold. Thanks to an unusual premise and complex morality, this stands out in the crowded field of Holocaust fiction. Agent: Matthew Carnicelli, Carnicelli Literary. (Mar.)