Jacob’s Oath

As he did in his first novel, The List, NBC news correspondent and National Jewish Book Award–winner Fletcher explores the experiences of Jews in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust in this engrossing, if unsettling, thriller. Jacob Klein survives the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, but was unable to save his younger brother, Maxie, from death at the hands of an SS guard, Hans Seeler. At a medical facility where Jacob is being treated after his liberation in April 1945, he’s dumbfounded to see Seeler, who gets away. Sustained by his desire for revenge, Jacob joins a group of Jews who are also seeking Nazis to execute. Their quest alternates with the story of Sarah Kaufman, who survived the war in Berlin (and whose sister was a schoolmate of Jacob’s sister), but finds that she still must struggle to stay alive after a Russian soldier brutalizes her. The taut prose and multidimensional protagonists help make this a page-turner. Agent: Carol Mann, Carol Mann Agency. (Oct.)