Eli Schneider hates Germans as hard as anyone can hate. And for good reason. Then he falls in love with one of them. LARA'S SHADOW is told against the backdrop of post-World War II Germany and the tensest moments of the Cold War. Eli is a young lieutenant in the U.S. Army, a Jew expected to defend the perpetrators of the Holocaust. While he struggles to protect his aging alcoholic company commander from a mutinous junior officer, he meets fraulein Lara Kohler. He initially pursues her just for sex, but it's her quirky personality and fascinating mind that ensnare him. In a country filled with former Nazis, there are bound to be secrets. He uncovers one layer of Lara's secrets after another until he must ask how much he can be expected to forgive. And how much responsibility she must carry for others' sins? Lara's Shadow is a love story full of perplexities that strain the limits of forgiveness. It probes the mixture of good with evil, and the visitation of parents' guilt on their children.
About the Author: After many fruitful years as a businessman, Alan started on this new career path as a fiction writer at a time some people are retiring. When asked why, Fleishman said, tongue in cheek, "I just wasn't finished adding to my resume." The writer was quite surprised by the success of his first two novels, Goliath's Head and A Fine September Morning, so he kept on writing. His newest novel, Lara's Shadow, is a compelling piece of historical fiction that tells the love story of a Jewish American Army officer and a German woman caught in post-Holocaust hate. Like the main character in Lara's Shadow, Fleishman is a Jew who served in a tank battalion in Germany at the height of the Cold War. The military tensions with the Soviet Union, and the tensions between the American soldiers and their German hosts provided grist for an intriguing novel. But his new novel is not autobiographical, Fleishman insists, though he drew heavily on his own experiences. "I never even knew anyone like Eli Schneider or Lara Kohler. I wish I had. They're very interesting characters." In a more serious vein, the author insists he has too many ideas for more stories to stop now. "Writing brings me enormous satisfaction when I give a presentation and see how people react, or I receive a piece of fan mail, or get a good review on Amazon. Every reader brings a little bit of his or her own unique person to the reading and interpretation of a novel. They see the books I write through their own eyes and experiences, not mine. I'm still developing as a writer of fiction, but I think I might be getting better at it." Prior to beginning his writing career, he was a marketing consultant, senior corporate executive, university adjunct faculty, corporate board member, community volunteer, and an officer in the U.S. Army. Fleishman hails from Pennsylvania, where he graduated from Berwick High School and Dickinson College with honors. Today Alan lives with his wife Ann and Siberian cat, Pasha, high on a hill in San Carlos, California overlooking San Francisco Bay.