“This extraordinary book is the result of the author’s avid pursuit of his father’s story–a father he barely knew and admittedly did not care much for. Paul Mayer, the father, was a young Jewish lawyer at the time of the Nazi incursion in Germany. Paul and his wife escaped, though reluctantly, to America, but he never fully recovered from the eventual news that his own parents had been murdered in Auschwitz. But what struck me most was how alive and complex Mayer feels on the page. He was a man of principle, a “quiet warrior” who never stopped writing passionate anti-fascist pieces in German American newspapers. The book is briskly written and full of important historical context, yet it is never heavy-handed. Now as history feels dangerously close to repeating itself, this book could not be more important. I highly recommend it—not just as a family story, but as a reminder of what resilience and moral courage look like.”