Nicholas Leigh

Abe of the People Nicholas Leigh

In the trench, about to go over the top in the First World War. On a train, travelling into the unknown of World War Two. Abe Volcker finds himself in the two worst places of the Twentieth Century.

In the trench is his fifteen year old friend Rudi. On the train is Markie, his eight year old son. He meets his wife Hannah and best friend Freddie in better times. But of all he is in life - veteran, businessman, husband, father, son - he is also a Jew, a fact of far more importance to others than it is to Abe.

In a hushed room, Maya Lieber tells of a charmed life inverted by the Holocaust, and her plight to survive the Nazi conquest of her native Poland.

A novel that sweeps through 25 immense years, Abe of the People is an intimate portrayal of a man in extremis, and a woman facing challenges impossible to contemplate. Both witness inhuman events through human eyes. Both experience the persistence of love in even the harshest times.