The Ser­pent Bear­er is a roman­tic World War II spy nov­el, com­plete with buried fam­i­ly secrets, dan­ger­ous Ger­man crim­i­nals, and, of course, a love sto­ry. Span­ning the peri­od from World War II to the present, the book fol­lows the sto­ry of Solomon (Sol­ly) Meis­ner, who trav­els from Spain to Mex­i­co and ends up in a small Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in North Car­oli­na, where he rais­es his daugh­ter, Isabelle. 

Now in his dotage, Sol­ly sits in his assist­ed liv­ing apart­ment and rem­i­nisces about the past. At the same time, Izzy is learn­ing that there is more to her father’s his­to­ry than she thought, and that the ver­sion of her par­ents’ love sto­ry she had grown up hear­ing may not have been the whole story.

Among Solly’s mem­o­ries that come flood­ing back is his nar­row escape when the build­ing he was in was bombed dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War. He also remem­bers being recruit­ed dur­ing World War II by the COI, the gov­ern­ment depart­ment new­ly cre­at­ed to gath­er for­eign intel­li­gence. Asked to spy on sus­pect­ed Nazis in Mex­i­co, Sol­ly agreed to go, hop­ing to find his lost love inter­est as well as answers to what had hap­pened in Spain. 

At first, Sol­ly thought this would be a sim­ple mis­sion. Look­ing back, he real­izes that, “[h]e’d been so cav­a­lier, so full of brava­do, think­ing what the hell, Sol­ly — go to Mex­i­co, have a look around, lis­ten in on some radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions, report back, win Estelle’s hand in mar­riage and come home, vic­to­ri­ous, free. A hero. What a fool.” 

The mis­sion brought him back in con­tact with peo­ple he had worked along­side in Spain, who he had thought were his friends. What had hap­pened to them? Why had they not tried to find him? Now he saw that the peo­ple he thought he knew may not have been who he thought they were. He began to won­der if the woman he loved real­ly was who she said she was. As he encoun­tered Nazi oper­a­tives and Jew­ish refugees, Sol­ly was find­ing out who was a true com­rade and who was a subversive. 

Won­der­ful­ly detailed descrip­tions of the land­scape, build­ings, and loca­tions bring the read­er right into the action. The Ser­pent Bear­er is a sto­ry of intrigue, dan­ger, and brav­ery. Some inter­est­ing his­to­ry of Nazi activ­i­ty in Mex­i­co enhances a plot abun­dant in grip­ping action scenes, near-death expe­ri­ences, and unselfish love.