Author: Ehud Diskin

Publisher: GREENLEAF BOOK GROUP PRESS

ISBN: 978-1-626634-516-4

Ehud Diskin, author of Lone Wolf in Jerusalem, uses the voice of David Gabinsky, a Jewish resistance fighter during World War II, to narrate his well-researched, 370-page novel.

For the most part the narrative is set in Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel when the British were in control by virtue of a Mandate given to them by the League of Nations in 1922.

David was from Minsk, Belarus, in Eastern Europe and was part of the partisan movement fighting the Nazis. Tragically, his mother, father, older brother and sister were all murdered like most of the one hundred thousand Jews who had lived in his community.

After the war, David makes his way to Palestine where the British had taken control of his ancestral homeland and enacted policies that cruelly treated Jews and explicitly limited Jewish immigration. Although, David did not consider the British as Nazis, he was nonetheless determined to get rid of the British forces and help his people establish a Jewish state. As a young boy, David devoted much of his time to studying and reading, however, after being caught up in the the war in Belarus for three years, his intellectual development was stunted and he was transformed into a fighting machine.

David chooses to go it alone and not join one of the underground resistance movements as the Irgun, Haganah or the Lehi. He realizes that he would be doing a balancing act in trying to gain information from each group in order to aid him in his own mission in helping to establish a Jewish state.

These three organizations were established in 1945 by the Jewish Agency and briefly coordinated their acts of sabotage and attacks against British authorities. In the novel Diskin refers to some of movements's operations such as the release of 200 members of Aliyah Bet from the detention camp in Atlit , the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where ninety-one people were killed including twenty-eight British citizens, and the bombing of railroads and train stations.

Upon arrival in Palestine, David informs us that he had no financial concerns as his group of partisans had robbed a Belarusian criminal who had collaborated with the Nazis and who had amassed a huge fortune stealing from Jews their diamonds, precious jewellery, gold coins and cash.

David rents an apartment in Jerusalem and one day meets Shoshana, who likewise is a holocaust survivor from Belarus and whom he immediately is attracted to wishing that he could take her in his arms and stay there for eternity. The two hit it off and both confide to one another their respective sad stories. Shoshana tells David that she works at Café Pinsk as a waitress and, if he is interested, she could introduce him to her boss Max, who might hire him as there is an opening for a waiter. David agrees and subsequently finds work at the café, although Max turns out not to be a very unpleasant fellow.

At this point in the story, Diskin shifts back to David's horrific experiences as a partisan in Belarus. At the same time David and Shoshana are beginning their love relationship, David is involved with a married woman, Hannah. whose husband, Avrum was an undercover officer in the British police. David believes that Avrum is a wholehearted Zionist who was very naive concerning the intentions of the British.

Using the many skills he had acquired as a partisan fighting the Nazis, David, acting as a lone wolf, embarks on several dangerous near death escapades that wreak havoc on the British occupation forces.

Diskin's mesmerizing prose is a vivid chronicle in Israeli history where memorable characters face unbelievable challenges as they live, love under extreme duress, and die for their passions. In the end what we have is a compelling and imaginative historical novel filled rich with descriptions and vivid scenes that capture time and place as well as the mentality of the various characters. It should be mentioned that the novel was originally written in Hebrew and quickly became a bestseller in Israel.