Thursday's Pick!

Silesian Station by David Downing


In the summer of 1939, foreign correspondent John Russell is coerced into working for Nazi intelligence. Unwilling to support a regime he despises, Russell plays a dangerous game as a double agent. Berlin’s Silesian Station provides the hub of Russell’s life, as he travels through Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia, reporting on the Third Reich as it tightens its hold on its own people and begins its move across Eastern Europe. Treading the perilous territory between his political masters, Russell is torn between resisting the Nazi regime and simply trying to preserve himself and his family. In the end, he finds that the only thing he can do is to try to save just one person, a Jewish girl who has disappeared from Silesian Station. This is a compelling portrait of ordinary people on the eve of war, and of an individual’s struggle to perform one act of humanity in the midst of a brutal regime.