SIEGFRIED FOLLIES A Novel

Richard Alther

Paperback / $18.00 / ISBN-13: 978-1-58790-204-8 / 316 pages / 5.5” x 8.5”

 Fiction

ABOUT THE BOOK

Siegfried Follies is the 30-year story of an unlikely pairing of two orphan boys—a German and a Jew—who together survive the loss of family, witness atrocities, and struggle for identity as adults.

Blond, blue-eyed Franz, a Hitler youth, in fleeing his Nazi home as bombs destroy Munich, saves a filthy, speechless boy thrown from a train. At first squatting in an opera house cellar, they soon make a proper home for themselves.

Despite Franz pursuing the American dream while J ventures from an Israeli kibbutz to New York City as a Hebrew storyteller and puppeteer, they forge a remarkable brotherhood. Both defying and affirming their past, their story is also of bonds broken, the worst kind of betrayal, tragedy, forgiveness, and redemption.

 Fueled by his ongoing search into the roots of Nazism, author Richard Alther studied German and Jewish history, folklore, and languages. This, his second novel, approaches the aftermath and legacy of the Holocaust from a gentile as well as a Jewish perspective.

Siegfried Follies takes the name of the wounded hero of ancient German lore.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard Alther was raised as a Lutheran German-American in a small New York City suburb, rife with anti-Semitism. After graduating from Cornell University, he pursued twin careers as a writer and a painter.  He supported his family writing vegetable gardening manuals from their Vermont farmhouse.  His paintings have been exhibited in Vermont, New England, Montreal, London, Los Angeles, Boston, Dallas, and Florida.  Also, he competes nationally as a Masters swimmer. Richard and his new spouse live in Vermont and Southern California.