The Singing Tree - Softcover

Moss, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0595309143 ISBN 13: 9780595309146

Publisher: iUniverse, 2004

Synopsis

Kristian Hardy, an old man closing out his days in the Amazon jungle, was once Kurt Hellmann, the youngest railway stationmaster in Germany. One day as he was serving in that capacity, a phone call caused him to panic and precipitate the deaths of 123 Jews en route to the concentration camps. Josef Mengele's remains having been identified, Hardy now regards himself as "the last Nazi mass murderer." He teeters just this side of despair, thanks to his love for Eduardo, his housekeeper's small son, and to his losing battle to maintain in good repair the Bechstein grand piano left behind by the plantation's previous owner. Unexpectedly, Hardy finds himself in love-with a young Jewish woman from New York, come to Brazil in search of butterflies, whom Hardy takes for his nemesis, the Nazi hunter of his recurring dreams. Hardy's youthful moment of panic had revealed to him the void at the center of what he had taken to be his values. He longs for punishment but has evaded it until now, when he openly courts an expiatory act."In his first novel, Peter Moss has Hardy tell his tale with economy and precision, leading us through a moral landscape as tangled as the Amazon wilderness. Even the touch of sentimentality toward the end tells us much about Hardy, and the unobtrusive ambiguity at the close provides just the right touch of muted dissonance. The Singing Tree is a little gem."-Frank Wilson, New York Times

About this title

About the Author

Once Kurt Hellmann, the youngest railway stationmaster in Germany, and now living out his last days in the Amazon jungle, Kristian Hardy remains haunted by the memory of a phone call that caused him to panic and precipitate the deaths of 123 Jews en route to the concentration camps.

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0595309143
• ISBN 13: 9780595309146
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 138