THE ANGEL OF HOHENECK

Fredrikson's Cold War–themed debut novel pits the power of totalitarian hate versus the healing power of love and faith.

Barely out of his teens, protagonist Janek Dabrowski proves himself a heroic leader in the Polish resistance during WWII, as he’s responsible for the deaths of many Nazi troops. But then, something inside him begins to change. He becomes an ardent Communist, gets a new “Russian” identity as “Yakov Nowak,” and eventually rises to a powerful position in the East German government. He and his first love, Salomeja Maciejko (who died in childbirth), have a son, Karl, who is said to have a promising future. But Karl falls in love with a devout Christian girl, Anja Bach. Yakov, a rabid atheist, will not have this. Yakov and Karl become estranged, and when Karl and the pregnant Anja try to escape to West Germany, Yakov has the Stasi hunt them down. Anja is kidnapped and spends 12 years in the hellhole that is Hoheneck Prison, but her Christian faith and love for Karl sustain her. Janek/Yakov is just this side of a villainous caricature, but he’s truly scary, showing how the callousness of war can turn a decent and patriotic person into a soulless monster. Fredrikson’s debut is impressive. He has clearly immersed himself in the history of the times (post-WWII to around 1960 and the building of the Berlin Wall), and his characters are believable and multidimensional. Is the prose sometimes a tad overheated? Sure, but that speaks to Fredrikson’s passionate style (“Every sense was now attuned to the other: a glimpse, no matter how brief; a scent, a waft of perfume as they passed; or the sound of his voice or her laughter; each sensation becoming a miniscule [sic] reprieve for their burning hearts"), and many readers will be happy to embrace it. He has a Zola-esque penchant for rubbing the reader’s nose in brutalities, detail by explicit detail. Often, this tendency stops just short of absurdist exaggeration; still, Fredrikson drives home how man’s inhumanity to man can be conquered with love and faith.

A well plotted page-turner with lofty ideas about overcoming adversity through deep faith in a higher power.