historical fiction
A very old man nearing death finally feels ready to tell his daughter the story of how he received the United States Distinguished Service Cross Medal during WWII. The novel describes his involvement in the attempt to break one Jewish man—The One Man—out of Auschwitz, where he was a prisoner during the Holocaust. Unbeknownst to the Germans, this man was the only non-German person on the planet who had critical weaponry information that the United States desired to aid the war effort.
The story was one of incredible bravery, unbelievable luck, and extreme intelligence. Of course, a lot of terrible things took place as well. This novel was written as a thriller and, indeed, the ending was un-put-downable. Andrew Gross used a truthful historical backdrop to set his fictional story of a scientist stuck in Auschwitz and the brave man sent there for 72 hours to break him out. There were several slow sections but, outside of those, it was a gripping story—both heartbreaking and hopeful.
The audiobook was narrated by one of my favorite narrators, Edoardo Ballerini. As expected, he was terrific! But, I must admit that, though his accents and voice acting were top notch, this story didn’t lend itself to his ability to display numerous different voices for different characters. A lot of them sounded the same. So I’ll give him an A- for this one.
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