Richard's debut is a sympathetic but ungainly portrait of a Holocaust survivor struggling to move beyond his terrible past. Max Friedman supposes he survived "because he didn't really care, not since the day he learned his wife had been killed, or as the Sonderkommando had put it, was den Schornstein hinauf
," or up the chimney. Now he leads a pleasureless, lonely life in 1970s San Francisco, filing papers for a social service agency by day and wandering Golden Gate Park at night. His only regular companion is Shmuel, a co-worker and fellow refugee. Late one night in the park, Max is startled by a young man dashing out of the bushes; the next day, he learns that a young woman has been found murdered nearby. While the authorities arrest a neo-Nazi named Mortimer Holtz—who proclaims his innocence—Max knows that the real killer is the boy. Max forces himself to find and confront the boy, who turns out to be a confused kid named Harold Kirby, who claims he killed the girl by accident. Max, surprisingly, decides to keep his secret. But at the same time "he could not let Holtz suffer for what the boy did. He could not let Holtz become a kind of Jew." The narrative takes a turn when, after another happenstance meeting, Max begins courting Clara Axelrod, a vivacious widow who manages to inject some joy into his haunted existence. The irony of a Jew defending a Nazi is one best left understated, but Richard is heavy-handed, and the plot takes some implausible turns. How Max comes to terms with his conscience is the biggest and thus most problematic one. (May)
