The Singing Tree

Kristian Hardy an old man closing out his days in the Amazon jungle was once Kurt Hellmann the youngest railway stationmaster in Germany. One day as he was serving in that capacity a phone call caused him to panic and precipitate the deaths of 123 Jews en route to the concentration camps. </p><P>Josef Mengele's remains having been identified Hardy now regards himself as the last Nazi mass murderer. He teeters just this side of despair thanks to his love for Eduardo his housekeeper's small son and to his losing battle to maintain in good repair the Bechstein grand piano left behind by the plantation's previous owner. Unexpectedly Hardy finds himself in love--with a young Jewish woman from New York come to Brazil in search of butterflies whom Hardy takes for his nemesis the Nazi hunter of his recurring dreams. Hardy's youthful moment of panic had revealed to him the void at the center of what he had taken to be his values. He longs for punishment but has evaded it until now when he openly courts an expiatory act.</p><P>In his first novel Peter Moss has Hardy tell his tale with economy and precision leading us through a moral landscape as tangled as the Amazon wilderness. Even the touch of sentimentality toward the end tells us much about Hardy and the unobtrusive ambiguity at the close provides just the right touch of muted dissonance. <I>The Singing Tree</I> is a little gem.--Frank Wilson <I>New York Times</I></p>