St. Martin's Press
September 2024
On Sale: September 17, 2024
Featuring: Theodore “Teddy” Hartigan
304 pages ISBN: 1250282489 EAN: 9781250282484 Kindle: B0CQHN1LFC Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
Theodore “Teddy” Hartigan is the scion of a wealthy Washington, D.C. family who place him into a comfortable job at the State Department and a placid diplomat’s career. In 1938, as Hitler’s inexorable rise continues, Teddy is re-assigned to the US Consulate in Amsterdam to replace fleeing staff.
Teddy’s job is to process visa applications, and by 1939, refugees from Nazi-conquered Poland, Austria, and other countries are desperate to secure safe passage to America. As Hitler sweeps through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Holland, the screws tighten and law after virulent law is passed to threaten the lives, indeed the very existence of the Jewish people. When Teddy and his girlfriend Sara are introduced to an orphaned young girl named Katy, who has been abandoned on the grounds of a nursery school, they agree to adopt her. Teddy comes to realize that he holds the key to saving lives, whether five, fifty, or five hundred—and makes the dangerous and selfless decision to join with underground groups and use his position at the Consulate to rescue those with no other avenue of escape.
Powerful and dramatic, National Jewish Book Award winner Ronald H. Balson’s A Place to Hide explores the deeply-moving actions of an ordinary man who resolves, under perilous circumstances, to make a difference.