Customer Reviews

Prodigal Sons

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In this fictional book Jan Goldberg, a Polish Jew and former resistance fighter has taken on the persona of Horst Vogle a museum curator. He is working to find and kill the Nazi's that were not brought to justice for whatever reason. He is also hunting for the gold and other valuables that were stolen by the Nazi's and used to send Nazi dignitaries to South America. This is where they hide out to escape punishment for their war crimes.
Things are going smoothly until he meets Greta Furster. She is an up and coming pianist. Some of her social crowd are the very people he is hunting. He has to make some tough decisions that involve his love for Greta and who he really is. This was a good story that I have happily passed on to one of our history teachers.

Munich, 1950: Horst Vogle seems to be one of many former German soldiers adapting to post-war life. Horst is a museum curator trying to reassemble Munich's scattered art collection. In reality, Horst has another life and another mission: as a member of an Israeli group terminating former Nazis. Horst's life becomes complicated after he meets Greta Furster, an aspiring pianist. He is torn between his identity, his mission and his feelings for Greta.

Greta introduces Horst to a group of war veterans who belong to an organisation trying to restore German pride and providing relief for East German refugees. When Horst also discovers that members of this group are using stolen Nazi gold to fund Egyptian weapons, he must act to stop this.

The events of World War II provide the frame for this novel and its themes of hope, despair, revenge and reconciliation. Horst Vogle's struggle is as much about the iteration of identity as it is about attempting to right some of the wrongs of this war. I enjoyed this novel, not so much for the subject matter and setting as for its promise of hope for a brighter future for Greta and Horst.

There are no real victories in war, just varying degrees of loss.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Greene has another great story for readers, and this one is a real page-turner. Set against the backdrop of the Polish resistance in WW II, the founding of Israel, and post-war Munich, Prodigal Sons has something for everyone -- sadness, anger, despair, revenge, spies, murder, art, music, intrigue, a multi-million-dollar heist, and finally a triumphant romance. Highly recommended.

The reviews for this book were too good to be true, literally. This was in no way a "page turner" for me. I thought it was slow; I found myself skipping pages just to get through it. The character development was poor, and the plot seemed to be taken from the pages of Daniel Silva's The English Assassin. The characters have no color or flavor. I guess I've been spoiled by the likes of Ken Follett, A.R. Homer and Daniel Silva. There was no holding my breath waiting for the good guy to be caught and wonder "How will he get out of this one?" Very dull and predictable. A total and complete let down.

I have loved Sheldon Greene's books, beginning with "Lost and Found" and now Prodigal Sons. I really enjoyed this book the first time through and now I look forward to reading it again, slowly, with special attention to certain passages, for their beauty, their wisdom, their expressions of love and of heartbreak. I read quickly, as I was eager to learn what would happen next and finally, how the story would end. But, as I read, I savored such clear and intimate portraits of people and relationships, such real and compelling descriptions of their thoughts and feelings, with vivid imagery and attention to background details of each scene, both historical background, as well as descriptions of where the action was taking place.

From a spiritual perspective, this story has much to offer. Toward the end, the main character thinks to himself, "Life itself was the only God and the earth and universe it's place of worship." I love that. It expresses so well, what I've struggled so long to put into words.

The symbolism throughout this book is also compelling and universally important. The last scene where Jan is looking at the mountain of ruble was expressed so well and extends our imagination to both personal and universal concerns. The end of the book is perfect, with questions and decisions remaining for the main characters, and also for us, expressing our existential choices- who am I, what matters to me, what do I believe, how should I live my life until I die?

Sheldon Greene's character, Horst, like so many european Jews, struggles to define himself in the midst of a war that did not end with the surrender of Germany. On the surface, PRODIGAL SONS is a spy adventure and a war story, a compelling narrative that rushes towards the well-crafted conclusion. The story explores a period 5 years after the war's end when Jewish survivors were hunting their tormentors, and the remaining Nazis were struggling to reinvent themselves as part of the new Germany. Below the surface, the novel dramatizes not only the losses, but the new choices available to Horst, the protagonist. Horst struggles with the issue of his identity - is he a killer seeking revenge, a builder of the new Jewish state of Israel, or is he part of the new Germany being formed? Beneath all of this, Greene explores some of the basic moral issues faced by the participants in a time of war, such as - who really has the right to kill? Greene presents all these layers together in a novel that is an enjoyable read. His prose is beautiful, spare and to the point, full of movement, not a word out of place. A splendid work of fiction, highly recommended!

At the end of World War II in Europe, there were many people that did many compromising things in order to survive. Some fought and killed, some actively allowed others to die so that they may live and many simply pretended to be someone that they were not. Jan Goldberg was a Jew living in rural Poland at the outbreak of the war. His family was very respected and relatively well off, his father was a doctor, and his mother a nurse and they were well liked by the local Polish population.
Safe in the early years of the war, eventually the German soldiers took Jan's parents and sister to a concentration camp where they died. Jan's appearance was more Teutonic than Jewish, so he could pass for a German, an identity helped by the fact that he spoke fluent German in the Prussian dialect. This allowed Jan to avoid the German sweeps for Jews and join a partisan band battling the Germans.
At the war's end, Jan attempted to reunite with his family, only to learn of their deaths. Like so many of his ethnic brethren still alive at war's end, he joined a group that illegally emigrated to Palestine and Jan was a soldier in the Jewish forces that emerged victorious in the war of independence. After the war, Jan was offered a position in the Israeli secret service, his mission was to track down and kill Nazi officials that had used the post-war chaos to shed their former identities and detach themselves from their crimes. He is now Horst Vogle, ostensibly a veteran of the Wehrmacht and a museum curator tasked with recovering lost and stolen art works.
His missions go well and his life follows its' unusual routine until he meets Greta Furster, an aspiring pianist that rekindles his capacity for love and passion that had been so dormant. This turns the book into a combination of a love story and personal quest to extract retribution for the Nazi crimes against Jews in the Second World War. There is an additional story line of Germans that have the goal of restoring German pride and financing it via materials looted from Jewish families and their persons.
This is a story that in at least partial form was repeated in thousands if not millions of instances in Europe after the war ended. The significant disruption of vast segments of the population that survived the war one way or the other left deep scars, and yet they all wanted to rebuild their lives. I found this particular example very engaging and others will as well, provided they have at least some knowledge of the historical context of Europe immediately after the end of the Second World War. A lack of that background will keep the reader from fully appreciating some of the sections and references.

Horst Vogle seemed like an innocent quiet man in a bar as another person approached him now and then. Just an innocent conversation--or was it? Doesn't seem innocent when they just sat and quietly talked or adjourned from the bar to a table and quietly had a personal discussion. This took place in Munich, West Germany in 1950. After leaving the bar, Horst walked through the dark streets seemingly innocent but avoiding any police in that area. He came up beside a man who seemed very drunk and asked him a light for his cigarette. Then with no warning Horst slipped a wire around the man and strangled him. Horst then moved swiftly to the train tracks to catch the last train of the night.

The same year he was out roaming and came upon a young woman that seemed upset because she had dropped her ring in the stream. After a few friendly words Horst retrieved her ring. Her name was Greta, a woman who was to become a huge part of Horst's life through the rest of the story. Horst had instructions from the Jewish death squad that was in constant search of Nazi's who had stolen the artwork and gold from the Jewish prisoners during the war. These instructions were to cleverly find these villains, retain any found items from them, then-in most situations-kill them. Horst was good at what he did because he was actually a museum curator in search of lost artifacts for the museum.

His search led him to many former Nazi's and he obtained many clues as to where his search would lead him and reacquire the artifacts to be sent back to Israel. His life got very complicated with his growing love for Greta. Greta only knew Horst as the curator of the museum, not his many quests for Israel. Greta was quite a good pianist and played for the major orchestra and chorus rehearsals. She improved so much that the music director wanted her for the actual performances. Horst attended when he could but had to work his way around his "hunting Nazi villains and recovering artifacts!"

The true historical facts of "Prodigal Sons" will allow the reader to go back to those days, both in the 50's and also during the war when the atrocities occurred. The treatment of the Jews and anyone thought Jewish was so harsh. When Horst's family was taken from their apartment Horst was torn as he watched from a distance as the Nazi soldiers took them. In his mind he wanted to go back to try to save them but inside, he knew he could do nothing if he tried. He knew he could do a lot more on his own but losing his family was so tear jerking.

If you have any interest in factual WWII history and some of the horrific acts performed by the Nazi's to get work from these prisoners, followed usually by killing them, you must read this book. The methods used by the Jewish death squad were so clever and in most situations, they were carried out with nothing suspected. Sheldon Greene held me spellbound to the last page.

I've been a fan of Sheldon Greene's work ever since the publication of his first novel Lost and Found. In Prodigal Sons he's in top form. Once again Greene has designed a plot that make you want to keep turning the pages. The two main characters --Horst Vogel, assassin and Jewish freedom fighter, and Greta Furster, concert pianist--grab you from page one. You want to know--need to know--how they are going to survive the dangers that surround them at every turn.

Greene has always had a talent for combining the kind of fine writing that is a hallmark of literary fiction with adventure, mystery, and romance; and he has a knack for picking exciting subjects. Prodigal Sons is set in a dark era that has not been extensively explored. There are a number of novels that deal with Germany just before or during World War II, but few that look at the chaos, violence, and clandestine fascist societies that continued to function after the fall of Nazi Germany.

Prodigal Sons can be enjoyed as a spy-thriller, yet on a deeper level, it's a revelation. There are scenes in it reminiscent of The Third Man, director Carol Reed's classic noir film about post-war Vienna. In short, this is a fact-based, thoroughly entertaining, compelling novel that will appeal to a wide audience of readers.