Fic­tion

The Umbrel­la Mak­er’s Son: A Nov­el of WWII

  • Review
By – February 14, 2025

One of the lessons of the Holo­caust is how quick­ly a minor­i­ty can be demo­nized and blamed for soci­ety’s ills. 

Tod Lending’s new nov­el, The Umbrel­la Maker’s Son, begins in Poland in the fall of 1939. Reuven is a sev­en­teen-year-old whose future seems end­less. Dur­ing the day, he works in the family’s cus­tom umbrel­la shop. After the store clos­es, his free time is spent with his girl­friend, Zel­da. Then the Nazis invade and his com­fort­able exis­tence quick­ly becomes a memory.

After watch­ing his fam­i­ly being tak­en from him, Reuven has only one goal: to get back to Zel­da. After recov­er­ing from a gun­shot wound at a rur­al farm, he returns to his oth­er half. The girl with whom he is reunit­ed is not the one he left. 

The hard­est part of writ­ing his­tor­i­cal fic­tion is to con­vey the facts while appro­pri­ate­ly insert­ing the char­ac­ters and sto­ry. Walk­ing a del­i­cate bal­ance, Lend­ing uses Reuven to tell the sto­ry of the approx­i­mate­ly six mil­lion Jews (1.5 mil­lion of whom were young peo­ple) whose lives were snuffed out. Lending’s deci­sion to tell the sto­ry from Reuven’s per­spec­tive is a bril­liant nar­ra­tive choice. Instead of being a long series of detached dates, events, and names, his­to­ry becomes a per­son­al sto­ry of a boy whose world is turned upside down. Through his eyes, we expe­ri­ence the joy of being in love and want­i­ng to spend every moment of your day with that per­son. The fear and anx­i­ety that sink in as your rights and human­i­ty are slow­ly and painful­ly tak­en from you. Run­ning for your life, not know­ing if you will be able to get to safety.

This nov­el will res­onate with many read­ers. In a cer­tain sense, Reuven is a typ­i­cal young man going through what all of us expe­ri­ence at his age. But in anoth­er sense, he is quite dif­fer­ent; he has to grow up quick­ly and make deci­sions that no one should have to make, regard­less of age.

Adi­na Bern­stein has been a writer and blog­ger since 2014. She lives in Brook­lyn and needs writ­ing to sur­vive this crazy world we live in. She can be found online at https://​writer​gurl​ny​.word​press​.com/.

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