Max’s War: The Story of a Ritchie Boy

In this meticulously researched historical thriller, Hellmann (the Georgia Davis series) follows Jewish teen Max Steiner from Europe to America and back again as he lives through the horrors of WWII. In 1932 Regensburg, Germany, schoolboy Max observes the seeds of Nazism beginning to take root across the country. He flees with his family to Holland in 1936. Four years later, when Hitler invades the Netherlands, Max leaves his family for the U.S., where he lands in Chicago. Shortly after he arrives, Max gets word his parents have been killed by the Nazis, so he enlists in the U.S. Army to avenge their deaths. In 1942, he’s assigned to Camp Ritchie, a secret training site in rural Maryland near the Pennsylvania border. There, Max and his fellow German-speaking U.S. soldiers are trained in the art of interrogation, counterintelligence, and psychological warfare, skills that Max taps into when he’s deployed overseas to interrogate German POWs and go undercover in occupied territories. Meanwhile, he nurses a crush on a girl he met in Holland before the war began. Hellman expertly marries heaps of historical detail with a thoughtful illustration of the dangers of nationalism. This ranks with the author’s best work. (Self-published)