J. Michael Dolan’s THE TRUMPETS OF JERICHO is a narrative re-telling of the Jewish uprising in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in which Jewish men tasked with working with the Nazis to run the camp crematoriums joined forces with an all female work team to fight back against their SS oppressors. The book traces this little publicized but inspiring event from 1942, when the principal characters filed into the camp, until its ultimate conclusion in 1945.

JERICHO feels like James Clavell’s Shogun. It is a sprawling work, featuring an enormous cast—Jews, Poles and Germans, all based on real people. The soul and intellect of JERICHO is perhaps Stanislaw Kaminski, who debates camp politics and religious philosophy. Its hands of feet are represented by Noah Zabludowicz, who drives the plot forward in a plodding, physical way. But the heart is, without a doubt, Rosa Robota, whose struggle is painfully and proudly on display throughout the book. It is she Noah is plodding toward, and her actions are a living version of the book’s philosophical discussion. Robota is always in the background, representative of the sensitive strength that the Jewish people carried during one of the gravest times in modern history.

For better or for worse, JERICHO is a big book. Not only is it more than 500 pages long, it is often built out of chubby, chunky paragraphs. Sometimes this is fine. Dolan has a gift for details—he describes himself as a historian—and his book is obviously well researched. However, this can make it a daunting read, especially when there are few chapter breaks, and careful research starts to become information overload. Also, while Dolan excels with description, he is not so fluent with dialogue. Many of his characters speak in odd, shuffling sentences, which can make for a distracting read.

However, it’s not the dialogue that gives the novel its emotional punch. About a hundred pages in, Kaminski contemplates a young pregnant woman going to the gas chambers who appears to realize her own fate. It’s a little longer than it needs to be, but it’s still gripping, powerful and contemplative. This is where the book shines: finding the human in the midst of the historic.

~Colin Newton for IndieReader