PRICKLE FORREST CHRONICLES BOOK REVIEW
By Chrissy Hartmann
February 14, 2020
TITLE: American BRUSH-OFF
AUTHOR: Max Willi Fischer
PUBLISHED: January 29, 2020
FORMAT: EBook(Kindle)
GENRE: Young Adult
PRICE: $2.99

So you don’t believe a government would turn on their own citizens?
That’s what Lud Mueller thought.
No its not 2020, but it is 1942 in Max Willi Fischer’s novel American Brush-Off.
The author crafts a story of an All-American senior high school boy from Cleveland when the USA’s culture became entrenched in Anti-German and anti-Japanese sentiment. Instead of playing football, hanging with friends, kissing his sweetheart, and enjoying his senior year Lud travels on a heart-aching journey that no American-born citizen wants to travel.
He must make a horrible sacrifice to reunite with his emigrant German parents and the rest of his family, And all for what?
A secret plan by the Democratic FDR administration to help end World War II.
You’ll find your curiosity growing with each of the 354 pages with a story worth being told.
Not many know about the American-Japanese internment camps and less about the American-German ones here in the USA during the second world war, but they are real. Real just like the death camps of the Third Reich. Fortunately for Lud, and the other 11,000 imprisoned it didn’t mean death, but the loss of one’s own identity, liberty, and happiness which comes in a distant second. The plot engages the reader to keep going always making you wonder if Lud brushes off his five year experience and return to his “normal” life in Cleveland or go on to help others who might encounter the same situation.
To the author’s credit, he’s done his homework. The scene descriptions place you inside Lud’s house in Cleveland… Living in the group home in Chicago… and finally riding the train to Crystal City. The dialogue carries the reader further into the scene and the emotions that Lud experiences pulls at your own heart making the reader wonder how a progressive-thinking government could betray its citizens. This is a book well worth the read that will teach the reader that bigotry exists for everyone, innuendo destroys, all are innocent until proven guilty, and there are those who work deep within the government that have their own secret plans. Kudoes to the author for revealing a truth lost in history. This is one book of history I think my teenage son will thoroughly enjoy. Well worth your time to read and it deserves Two thumbs up and a five star rating. Looking forward to the author’s next book.