Immigrant Soldier: The Story of a Ritchie Boy
“On a cold November morning in 1938, Herman watches in horror as his cousin is arrested. As a Jew, he realizes it is past time to flee Germany, a decision that catapults him from one adventure to another, his life changed forever by the gathering storm of world events.”
Lang-Slattery’s extensively-researched, richly-textured novel concentrates on a young German Jew named Herman Lang, whose life in Germany in the late 1930s is increasingly darkened by the growing savagery of the Nazi Party. His misgivings culminate in November 1938’s Kristallnacht pogrom, prompting him to set about the complicated and dangerous process of leaving the tightening web of the Third Reich.
Lang makes his way to America, where he trains as an intelligence officer and later joins General George Patton’s Third Army in its drive across formerly Nazi-held Europe.
Lang-Slattery grounds the memories and stories of Lang, who was her uncle, with a great deal of research, and she tells those stories in vivid prose and very lively dialogue to make a memorable WWII-era coming-of-age story.
