Book Review - Prodigal Sons by Sheldon Greene

Today is the anniversary of a monumental day. Twenty years ago, On November 9, 1989, The East German government announced that all German Democratic Republic citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin, and so began the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Berlin wall was the symbol of the Iron Curtain between Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc that began after World War II ended. The fall actually began months earlier, on August 23, 1989 when Hungary removed its physical border defenses with Austria. This led to thousands of East German ‘tourist’ visiting Hungary making their way to the West German Embassy and refusing to return to East Berlin. They must have believed their freedom and a better way of life could be found on this other side, or maybe they were looking for family that had been taken away from them when the wall went up. It makes one question, what would you do to find lost a lost family member or to stand up for what you believe? When World War II ended it left many confused, conflicted, grieving, angry, lost; trying to pick up the pieces of their lives and build a new one.


Sheldon Greene has given us a fictional glimpse into the lives of a few of the Germans who survived the war and how they began a new life in the wake of Hitler’s devastation. In Prodigal Sons, Horst Vogle must come to terms with the events he lives through during the war. Greene does a wonderful job of putting the reader inside Horst skin. While for me this book had a slow start, once I got into the mind of Horst, I was hooked and found it hard to put the book down. Greene’s Prodigal Sons has a slower pace than similar books and it works beautiful because it forces you to focus on the players, see their world through their eyes and feel what they feel. When Horst is torn, we too are torn. It is a rare gift for an author to invoke such empathy from a reader. As the reader we feel the emptiness in our chest that Horst feels as he watches his family being taken by the Nazi’s, we feel his rage at the atrocities his fellows Jews are suffering, we feel his loneness as he struggles to find himself in a world where he is now alone even when surrounded by others, we understand his feeling of contentment when he reaches Israel and for the first time in years feels apart of something again, and we are with him when he decides to become a hired gun for Israel and give up that contentment to go back to Germany and avenge his roots. We are charmed when he meets the enchanting Greta who lightens his step and we struggle with him when he must chose between love and country. Prodigal Sons is a novel that takes you through every emotion. It’s more than a thriller, a romance, a historical novel, a spy thriller, heist…it’s a novel about the human condition, life and our ability to endure.

So on the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we should celebrate freedom and the human spirit and learn from those who have gone before us what it means to stand up for your beliefs and to live. Horst may be a character born in the mind of Sheldon Greene, but he is a also a symbol of humanity and how we can prevail. I give this book 4 Torah pointers out of 5.

This book was provided by the author.

Come back on Friday, November 20th, to learn more about Sheldon Greene.

This Review is part of Cym Lowell's Book Review Party. Click here to go to his site and read other great reviews.