By Doris Rivas
The controversy over Barack Obama's place of birth was always going to be potentially fruitful territory for the novelist. This book, "The Saving of an Illegal President A Novel" could be the first drop in a deluge of such fiction. Readers should be grateful that at least the author has avoided making an African-American politician his hero. Instead he opts for someone at the other end of the spectrum, a veteran, grizzled, white Senator from the Midwest.
Harry Bailey is well ahead in the polls in his bid for the White House but he's a complete fake. He is really a former Nazi concentration camp guard by the name of Horst Barnuch. This is no ordinary "I was just obeying orders " type of guard. He is a man who personally murdered dozens of camp inmates. Barnuch's fate seems sealed as the Red Army's assault on the camp continues in 1945. But when he sees the body of another guard he puts on the dead man's uniform and assumes his identity. The Soviets and the US army are fooled.
After his interrogation, Barnuch is freed and eventually smuggles himself aboard a freighter to the US. He heads for the Midwest, where he thinks life will be quieter and his secret safer, and sets up in Des Moines. He masters English so well that he soon passes for a native Iowan. The clincher is a forged American birth certificate. Then, after a few years, he embarks on a political career.
He becomes a Congressman and then a Senator, but catastrophe strikes when the Washington Post tells him that a camp survivor has told the paper that he's convinced Harry Bailey is "Barnuch the Butcher". Stunned, Bailey holes up at his home, dreading a call that the Post has tracked down his real, German, birth certificate.
Instead, as he writes his confession and resignation statement, his chief aide phones to tell him that he's been told by the Dresden authorities that the building housing all the city's birth certificates went up in smoke in an Allied bombing raid. So Harry's secret is safe and he goes on to win the presidential election.
This novel makes riveting reading, particularly because the author exploits the ambivalence many people will feel for Bailey's plight. Readers will ask themselves whether they want him to get away with his audacious con trick or not. They may never be really sure of the answer.
The big question is whether this novel really works. Much of the plot is off-the-wall. It is hard to believe that Barnuch/Bailey could go unchallenged for so many years. Good as his English became, there must surely have been some trace of a German accent. That, pointing to his foreign birth, should have been enough to stop him becoming president, even if his war crimes remained hidden. And then surely those master Nazi hunters, the Israelis, would have pursued and probably captured him.
In the last analysis, the reader either finds the whole story unbelievable or he or she suspends judgement and enjoys a good read. The end of "An Illegal President A Novel Of Deception" is a masterstroke. The future of the United States of America is effectively determined by the destruction of one building in one bombing raid.
Harry Bailey is well ahead in the polls in his bid for the White House but he's a complete fake. He is really a former Nazi concentration camp guard by the name of Horst Barnuch. This is no ordinary "I was just obeying orders " type of guard. He is a man who personally murdered dozens of camp inmates. Barnuch's fate seems sealed as the Red Army's assault on the camp continues in 1945. But when he sees the body of another guard he puts on the dead man's uniform and assumes his identity. The Soviets and the US army are fooled.
After his interrogation, Barnuch is freed and eventually smuggles himself aboard a freighter to the US. He heads for the Midwest, where he thinks life will be quieter and his secret safer, and sets up in Des Moines. He masters English so well that he soon passes for a native Iowan. The clincher is a forged American birth certificate. Then, after a few years, he embarks on a political career.
He becomes a Congressman and then a Senator, but catastrophe strikes when the Washington Post tells him that a camp survivor has told the paper that he's convinced Harry Bailey is "Barnuch the Butcher". Stunned, Bailey holes up at his home, dreading a call that the Post has tracked down his real, German, birth certificate.
Instead, as he writes his confession and resignation statement, his chief aide phones to tell him that he's been told by the Dresden authorities that the building housing all the city's birth certificates went up in smoke in an Allied bombing raid. So Harry's secret is safe and he goes on to win the presidential election.
This novel makes riveting reading, particularly because the author exploits the ambivalence many people will feel for Bailey's plight. Readers will ask themselves whether they want him to get away with his audacious con trick or not. They may never be really sure of the answer.
The big question is whether this novel really works. Much of the plot is off-the-wall. It is hard to believe that Barnuch/Bailey could go unchallenged for so many years. Good as his English became, there must surely have been some trace of a German accent. That, pointing to his foreign birth, should have been enough to stop him becoming president, even if his war crimes remained hidden. And then surely those master Nazi hunters, the Israelis, would have pursued and probably captured him.
In the last analysis, the reader either finds the whole story unbelievable or he or she suspends judgement and enjoys a good read. The end of "An Illegal President A Novel Of Deception" is a masterstroke. The future of the United States of America is effectively determined by the destruction of one building in one bombing raid.
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