Book Title: Between These Walls by Michael Newman

Category: Adult Fiction 18 yrs +, 375 pages

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Friesen Press

Release date: March 26, 2020

Synopsis

A novel of historical fiction that turns on two key events: the discovery of a beautiful blonde woman’s body in the back seat of a burnt out SS staff car during the last days of World War II, by US Army Medical Corps Colonel Samuel Singer, and the unsealing more than four decades later of a security-taped package from Germany, bearing a secret that changes the life of New York art curator Daniel Singer, the adopted son of Colonel Singer.

As Daniel learns more about the package’s contents, he unlocks the history of three families — one American and two German – through tumultuous times, from the end of the First World War to the rise of Adolf Hitler, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and through to three Middle East wars. Along the way, he gets entangled in the web of the Mossad, Israel’s top secret spy agency and Naomi one of its beautiful operatives, and is ultimately faced with a life-altering choice – and the opportunity to right the most heinous of wrongs.

Interview with Michael Newman

How did you come up with the premise of the novel?

On a visit to Berlin, Germany, my wife and I were walking along a street named Meineke Strasse, which features prominently in the book, when I noticed some brass plaques embedded in the sidewalk. They had the names of Jews who had lived in the apartment building above the plaques in the 1930’s and 40’s who had been taken by the Nazis, shipped off to concentration camps, and had their apartments taken over by Aryan Germans. I wondered what had happened to the people who had been shipped to the camps, to the apartments they left behind, who was occupying them now, and how they came into possession of them. So I built the story around that.

What made you write a book about the Holocaust?

Primarily because my Father spent eight months in captivity in Mauthausen, a notorious Nazi concentration camp in Austria, in 1944/45. Also many people, especially the younger generation, don’t know anything about the Holocaust and there are many Holocaust deniers out there who trivialize what happened to people simply because of their religion in those terrible years. Six million people died between 1939 and 1945 at the hands of the Nazis.

Your book is set in Germany, Austria, Hungary and Israel. Have you visited those places?

I was born in Hungary, and yes I’ve been to all the places mentioned in the book. I’ve been to Berlin, Munich, Mauthausen, Budapest, Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. I’ve visited the key locations where events in the book take place and absorbed the atmosphere generated by these places, which helped me with the writing of the book.

What is your next project?

My next project is to write a sequel to “Between These Walls.” It would follow the career and adventures of Daniel Singer’s daughter (whom he never met), as she prepares and embarks on a mission to find and avenge her father’s killers in Lybia, after joining the CIA.

What genre do you write in and why?

I write historical fiction. History is something that truly interests me. What has happened, and why it happened in the past is very fascinating. The rise and fall of historical figures teaches us a great many lessons. It is very interesting to see how empires and countries evolve through conflict and peaceful times and how political systems succeed and fail.

What is the last great book you’ve read?

“Children of a Faraway War” by Wendy Gruner. It is the true life story of two Australian sisters whose father died as an RAF radio operator in a Lancaster bomber crash in the Second World War, while they were very young. The book describes the sisters’ journey back to England to visit all the places their father had served in England, following his diary. It is truly a historical memoir with detailed description of Bomber Command, with a very humanistic approach, as the girls discover things about their late father that they never knew.

About the Author

A Hungarian refugee (1956) and the son of Holocaust survivors. A retired lifetime entrepreneur living on Toronto’s waterfront with my wife and cocker spaniel. Enjoys reading, mainly books about WW2, boating and worldwide travel. Father of three kids and grandfather of eleven.

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