61 pages • 2 hours read
Once We Were Brothers
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Overview
Once We Were Brothers is a Jewish historical fiction novel and legal thriller published in 2013 by the American author and attorney Ronald H. Balson. A finalist for the Harper Lee Award for Legal Fiction, the book tells the story of two young men on opposite sides of the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland. It is the first entry in Balson’s Liam Taggart and Catherine Lockhart book series.
Plot Summary
The book is divided into three parts. Part I, “The Confrontation,” is set in 2004 in Chicago. An 83-year-old Holocaust survivor named Ben Solomon uses an antique Nazi pistol to threaten another octogenarian Holocaust survivor, the billionaire businessman and philanthropist Elliot Rosenzweig. Ben accuses Elliot of being a former Nazi SS officer named Otto Piatek, further alleging that Otto stole Ben’s family’s valuables and life savings during the war. Under the guise of empathy for a fellow survivor, Elliot asks the police to drop all charges against Ben. Private investigator Liam Taggart convinces his best friend, a disgraced corporate litigator named Catherine Lockhart, to hear Ben’s story and evaluate whether he has grounds to bring a civil lawsuit against Elliot.
