SHADES OF BETRAYAL

This novel set during the outbreak of World War II chronicles the intersecting lives of people changed forever by the German invasion of Poland.

In 1927, Joseph Novak is forced to leave his family in Warsaw for work in Lorraine, France, as a blacksmith. While there, he suffers a terrible accident with friend and co-worker Jean Navarre. Jean is killed and Joseph is grievously wounded, his face so disfigured that he’s mistaken for his friend, a conflation he cannot correct since he has lost his memory. Joseph remarries and begins a new life as a Frenchman. But as war erupts across Europe, he is drawn into the world of the Resistance by a man named Marc Kurtz, who threatens to expose Joseph’s true identity, one that he slowly begins to recollect. Baker builds a labyrinthine skein of stories around this tale. Joseph’s son, Ted, becomes a high-ranking member of the Resistance after the invasion of Poland and befriends Joey Wilk, his half brother, the result of his father’s infidelity. While Joey joins the Polish air force, Ted falls in love with Rose Podolski, the best friend of his younger sister, Ania. But Rose begins a romance with Erik Hermann, an ambitious German soldier who struggles to turn a blind eye to his Polish ancestry. In this ambitious novel, Baker’s command of the historical period is impressive. The story of Poland’s national trauma during the war is an important one, and the author offers many rich details. But Baker’s vast knowledge doesn’t translate into a dramatically compelling story. The tale offers little that is fresh to a body of war literature—scholarly and artistic—that is already well populated. The plot is as slow as it is confusing and turns soap-operatic at times. Finally, the prose can be excessively earnest. At one point, Erik, musing about his Polish heritage, tries to convince himself he chose the right allegiance: “That was a long time ago, a different world. I’m German and I need to follow commands for the greatness of the Third Reich.”

An intriguing but slow-paced war tale.