Review Detail

I'm going to break out of my usual review mold here because this book was so many things.
It was hard hitting.
It was hard to read.
It was amazing.
I was in Germany when I read this book. I also have a personal connection to the holocaust, but neither of those things was what got me about The Path Divided. Because this isn't really a book about the horrors of Holocaust -- though it does touch on that.
This is a story about people. About all the sides of humanity, ranging from the ugly and detestable to the beautiful and self-sacrificing to the downright indifferent. It's a story about how you find out who you, and those around you, when hate is all around you, being propagated and endorsed.
I said this was hard to read, and it is. First, because it's hard to read a person justify his own despicable actions. The part that got me, though, that I believe is not for the faint of heart, is the gut-wrenching knowledge of how many lives were cut short, how many stories ended abruptly and without answers, as pieces of this one did. Intentionally.
This is a book I think everyone should read. You think you've read books about the Holocaust and about World War II, about Jews being taken from their homes and Concentration Camps and violence and Hitler. Those stories are important, too, but this is nothing like them.
In a couple hundred pages, Moran will make you take another look at history, at humanity, and maybe hardest of all, at yourself.