WHEN COURAGE COMES

In 1943, an Austrian forcibly conscripted into Hitler’s army is captured and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Texas in this debut novel.

Stephan Jurgen never wanted to leave his native Vienna to serve as a pawn of Nazi imperialism, but he wasn’t given a choice. He is captured by American forces in the North African desert and interrogated by Ralph Bauer, a captain in the Military Intelligence Service. Stephan saves his life, pulling him out of the path of an errant military vehicle. Grateful and convinced Stephan isn’t a Nazi loyalist, Ralph vows to track him down after the soldier is sent to America. Stephan ends up in a POW camp in Huntsville, a small town north of Houston, that just happens to be Ralph’s hometown. Ralph’s younger sister, Rose, is a schoolteacher there. The family is of German extraction, and since she speaks the language fluently, she is recruited to work at the POW camp as an interpreter. When Stephan is sent to Rose’s family farm as part of a work detail, the two become acquainted and develop a bond that threatens to blossom into something romantic. Meanwhile, Stephan is tossed into a dangerously mixed population of inmates; some, like him, are unhappy conscripts, and others are devout Nazis who violently tyrannize them. In this ambitious tale, Fleming intelligently conveys Stephan’s unenviable plight—he receives moral approval from neither his American captors nor his fellow German soldiers, a victim of impersonal historical forces. The author also offers readers an array of intriguing characters and plenty of rich period details. But Fleming’s writing lacks literary style and too heavy-handedly foreshadows the plot’s trajectory. Referring to Rose, the omniscient narrator can’t help but jump ahead in a way that diminishes the story’s power: “Little does she realize that the one person who will soon embrace these unwelcome visitors is Uncle Pete. And one guest in particular will change Rose forever.”

A historically authentic war tale that never quite takes full flight.