A place to hide

In this memoir-style novel, Balson (An Affair of Spies, 2022) uses the experiences of Theodore "Teddy" Hartigan to describe the actions of freedom fighters in Nazi-occupied Holland from 1938 to 1942. Hartigan, a State Department staffer sent to the American consulate in Amsterdam in 1938, falls in love with the Netherlands and with a Jewish woman named Sara Rosenbaum. After Hitler installs the ruthless Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Reich commissioner following the Netherlands' surrender in 1940, Hartigan morphs from bureaucrat to spy and resistance leader. He works alongside Saul Rosenbaum, Sara's father, to hide Jewish families. He also helps Alice Cohn form the Utrechts Kindercomité, or UKC, the Dutch arm of organized kindertransport. Though Balson devotes a portion of the novel to an adult kindertransport survivor's search for surviving family members, that story line pales in the face of the far more compelling historical narrative. Balson concludes by confirming that resistance fighters like Hartigan, Rosenbaum, and the real-life Cohn saved more than 30,000 Dutch families forced into hiding and at least 700 infants placed for adoption via kindertransport.

National Jewish Book Award winner Balson (The Girl from Berlin) delivers a middling portrait of an altruistic American diplomat in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam and the woman who meets him decades later during her search for her long-lost sister. In 2002, crotchety Teddy Hartigan, who lives at an assisted-living facility, agrees to meet with freelance journalist Karyn Sachnoff, who was born into a Jewish family in Amsterdam shortly before the Nazi occupation, to help her find out what happened to her long-lost sister, Annie, when both girls were adopted by separate families. Teddy has one condition: that Karyn write his life story as a legacy for his grandchildren. After much buildup, Teddy recounts the central narrative. In 1938, Teddy is tapped to process visa and travel applications at the U.S. embassy in Amsterdam, where fears of a German invasion have led to a huge backlog. As Hitler continues his belligerence, Teddy is forced to improvise to protect his new love interest, a Jewish teacher named Sara, and to save as many Jews as he can. The dialogue rings false--Teddy says of Hitler, "He may have the world's largest army, but I wouldn't bet against the rest of the free world"--and most of the plot developments are predictable. It's a superficial and hackneyed treatment of the period. Agent: Mark Gottlieb, Trident Media Group. (Sept.)