The Wall

Plot

"Only a true novelist could breathe warmth, compassion, humor, into what a historian would necessarily have pictured as a stark, hopeless, tragic series of events. Only a sensitive novelist could compel us to embark upon such a fearful adventure as this and remain until the end." -- The New York Times

"A searching, heroic story." -- The Atlantic
Product Description
Riveting and compelling, The Wall tells the inspiring story of forty men and women who escape the dehumanizing horror of the Warsaw ghetto. John Hersey's novel documents the Warsaw ghetto both as an emblem of Nazi persecution and as a personal confrontation with torture, starvation, humiliation, and cruelty -- a gripping and visceral story, impossible to put down.

Hersey is probably America's greatest unrecognized writer. Hersey probably didn't care. The Wall drove me to my local library where I soon found the names of many of his fictional characters. The Jewish historian who hid his writings in milk cans has a name. He died in 1944. Milk cans were still being found in the 1950's according to my research. How did the son of Protestant missionaries to China write this Jewish story? It was easy---Hersey loved them very much. His characters are largely doomed to the fate the Nazi's inflicted upon them. But you cry for them--we lost those wonderful people because they were Jewish. Hersey writes with a pen in one hand and a lightning bolt in the other. This is a great read, filled with compassion and a skill with words that is nearly gone from today's garish bestsellers.