Bagels & Books: The Fifth Column

Description

About the Book: February, 1939. In New York City, twenty-two thousand cheering Nazi supporters pack Madison Square Garden for a hate-filled rally. In a Hell’s Kitchen bar, Charles Mossman is reeling from the loss of his job and the demise of his marriage when a group draped in Nazi flags barges in. Drunk, Charlie takes a swing and a torrent of unintended consequences follows. Two years later. Charles’s estranged wife and daughter, Emma, live in a quiet brownstone in the German-speaking New York City neighborhood of Yorkville, where support for Hitler is common. Charles, just out of prison, struggles to put his life back together. Across the hall from his family, a kindly Swiss couple, Trudi and Willi Bauer, have taken a liking to Emma. As the threat of war grows, and fears of a “fifth column” — German spies embedded into everyday life — are everywhere. When Pearl Harbor is attacked and America can no longer sit on the sideline, that conspiracy turns into a deadly threat with Emma as an innocent pawn.