RISE OF THE SPIDER

Tensions rise when a cadre of Hitler Youth arrives in a young student’s Bavarian town.

“They stood out like skunks in their brown shirts, black pants, and jackboots.” Rolf is upset to see the deteriorating relationship between his always-angry older brother, Romer, and their widowed father. But he’s more disturbed by evidence that Romer is drifting toward sinister, spiderlike Hans and the squad of uniformed thugs behind him—particularly after the distribution of recruitment leaflets is followed by arson and the beating of a local Jewish merchant as bystanders watch…some approvingly. Matters come to a head when Hitler speaks at a mass rally; Rolf comes away from the experience firm in his conviction that the Nazi takeover must be resisted. This fast-moving, stirring tale is set in 1929, but along with a timeline that begins with Hitler’s birth and ends in 1935, the author intersperses helpful flashbacks about the end of the First World War, the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, and other events presented as news stories. He also makes explicit the book’s cautionary purpose: “It’s common for us who live in democracies around the world to say, ‘it can’t happen here,’” he writes in his afterword. “It can.”

Clear of stance and cogent of theme.