The Good German

 by Dennis Bock

Harv read this book before I did.  He said he liked it.  I did not.

The book is an alternate history following WWII but I don't think it really did much to carry through on the idea.

The book starts with a young German man who prepares a bomb that kills Hitler.  He thinks that this will stop the war but instead Goring takes over and carries out pretty much what Hitler did.  The man tries to escape but is caught at the border to Switzerland.  He is interrogated and tortured.  Eventually he is sent to a prison camp.  He manages to escape from there and makes his way to England on a ship.  However, the ship is captured and he is taken by German soldiers in control of England and made to do clean up in London following a nuclear bomb or bombs having been dropped on London.  

Many of the people who are given this job go blind from the exposure and the man and others are shipped to Canada to a hospital run by nuns.  In this story the person who is the U.S. President is sympathetic to Germany so the U.S. never enters the war.  And, for some reason never really explained Canada now seems to be run by Russia.  Russian officials with Geiger counters often visit the hospital to take readings,

The man had come to Canada with a young woman he met in Europe.  She has her baby in Canada but is devastated when the baby girl has deformed hands.  The woman kills herself and a young German woman from the town, who has been forced to serve as a helper at the hospital is made to be the wet nurse for the baby.  Eventually the man is given cataract surgery and is able to leave the hospital but he leaves his daughter behind afraid of what she will face because of her deformed hands

The book switches to more recent times when two brothers are being picked on because their mother (the wet nurse) was German.  They are bullied at school and once a year on the annual federal holiday locals set a fire in the front yard of their house.  The boy's mother has kept in contact with a Brother in Germany.  Eventually she decides it will be better if she returns to Germany, that this will take the pressure off her family.  The family is devastated and it doesn't change the abuse they face.  One anniversary evening the fire lit in their yard sets their house on fire.  The boys survive but their father doesn't.

The younger of the two brothers volunteers at the hospital and becomes friends with the young girl. News reports say that American Jews are going to be deported to Canada.  The boys think they might get praise and less bullying if they are able to help.  But they don't succeed.  The young girl introduces the young boy to a young Jewish girl she has found and taken to the hospital.

Eventually the boys, the girl, and the girls father set up a reverse underground railroad taking German Canadians to the U.S. and all of them eventually make their way to the west coast of the U.S.

I didn't find the book interesting. I think the author could have done more to explain why Canada was controlled by the Russians. I did'nt find the writing engaging nor the characters interesting.