Singing Tree -OS

Set in Brazil's Amazon basin, this short, powerful first novel takes the form of a journal kept by aged rubber planter Kurt Hellmann, aka Kristian Hardy, who conceals his sordid past in Nazi Germany. As a young Bavarian railway stationmaster, Hellmann dutifully helped transport thousands of Jews to the gas chambers. Repentant, guilt-ridden, his secret continually gnawing at him, he seeks redemption through his devotion to Eduardo, his housekeeper's Indian son. When the body of a kidnapped Indian girl is found on Hellmann's property, the self-castigating emigre makes a ritual pact with the Indians, offering his own life if he fails to find her murderer. Enter Ruth Golding, a vibrant Jewish naturalist from New York. Is she on a butterfly-collecting mission in the ecologically threatened jungle? Or is she a Nazi-hunter after human prey? Suffice to say that their charged encounter blasts Hellmann out of his fatalism. Moss, a Hong Kong-based journalist of Anglo-Indian origins, crafts a mesmerizing story that points an accusatory finger at each of us, asking who we would have been in Nazi Germany, and what parts we play now as evil continues to stalk the world. (Dec.)