Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle– In the past few years I have read various books about the plight of oppressed immigrant groups as they struggle to make it in America at different times in our history. This includes, Chinese, Japanese, and of course European immigrants including Holocaust survivors. However this is the first book that I have read about this subject in which most of the action takes place in locations, which would be less than 15-minute drive from my home in Woodland Hills California. Tortilla Curtain is the story of Mexican immigrants struggling for a foothold in the America, which happens to be near and about Topanga Canyon in the San Fernando Valley. A young Mexican woman interestingly named “America” and her slightly older husband Candidio are smuggled across the border in in an effort to do what so many of our ancestors have done. That would be to attempt to achieve some version of what they see as the American dream. The other main focus of this story is Delaney, a self proclaimed liberal who lives with his wife Kyra, a successful real estate agent and her son Jordon from a previous marriage. They live in a spacious community that progresses from a gated community to a walled community because of the real and the perceived dangers from coyotes as well as from some of the Mexican immigrants. The author T.C. Boyle allows the reader to know both sets of characters and their back-story. We come to appreciate Delaney and his wife’s frustration as they see their beloved dogs snatched away by coyotes who follow their own natural inclination to survive. They also have a run in with some of illegal Mexican immigrants who we come to know as honest, hard working people who are following their own natural instincts to survive. They want to earn a living and provide for their themselves and ultimately for their family. Delaney is turned into an angry, revengeful, vicious man and his wife is depicted as a self-indulgent women.  As the story progresses the reader loses any empathy or identification, which they may originally, had for them. I neglected to say that Delaney by occupation is a writer who studied and wrote about nature and all it’s little creatures with special emphasis on the environment. This becomes an ironic point because it is the natural instincts of America and Candido as well as the other immigrants who are just also trying to survive in their environment which brings them into conflict with Delaney and his neighbors. Even a cursory study of the natural climate factors in this area would lead one to understand that FIRE is required to keep nature in balance but when a fire is accidentally set by those trying to survive or by  just by lightning, it becomes the immigrants who are blamed. This probably is not very much different than when the Jews are blamed for bad economic times or when any other persecuted group is blamed for the frustrations of the group in power.  This is a powerful story and if you live near where the story takes place, it feels more personal even if you truly believe that we are past most of this type of thinking

In The Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson – Just when it seems that everything has been written about the rise of Nazism, a new work come along that sheds further insight on this horrific piece of history. Erik Larson ( author of The Devil in the While City ) allows us to see this morbid piece of history through the eye of William Dodd, a university professor who was chosen by President Franklin Roosevelt to the US Ambassador to Germany in the 1930s, just as Hitler is coming to power. He, his wife and two grown children, Bill and Martha come to Berlin bringing their old Chevy with them so Dodd could try to avoid an ostentatious diplomatic life style and live within his meager salary. Never the less he did attend the lavish diplomatic events  as required. He got know the rising Nazis and witnessed first hand the slow  but sure disenfranchisement of the Jews living in Germany and the ultimate brutality of the Nazis. His daughter Martha can only be described as a free spirit. She dated and romanced several young German officers, a Russian spy and even was introduced by one of her boyfriends to Adolph Hitler who kissed her hand. Both father and daughter at first didn’t appreciate the significance of the changing atmosphere in Germany. Initially, they   even seemed to sympathize with what they thought was seemingly innocuous anti-Semitic views expressed by some of the German leaders and many of the German people. Both did come to understand the true nature of the new German rulers. They saw not only was it undemocratic but it was  cruel and inhuman. From early on in his stay Dodd felt some of the people in the state department and even some from his staff badmouthed him because they felt he didn’t fit in this “old boys” network. It was Ambassador Dodd who tried to inform his superiors in Washington of what was happening in Germany but he was minimized by many voices in the US state department. The impression is given that Roosevelt did understood the reality but couldn’t speak out or take action because the mood of the US was not ready. In the end Dodd came out a hero-although a lonely voice that obviously never made a difference but deserves to be remembered.

The authenticity of the narration is supported by detailed research, which Larson documented at the end of this book. This included a meticulous review of archives from all over the world, biographies, memoirs published and unpublished. There would seem to be no doubt that the reader has viewed the birth and growth of the Nazi beast from a unique vantage point.