Night Lessons

Book excerpt: Rudy admires and fears his white supermacist stepfather, Judd. Under his tutelage, he joins Aryan Salvation, an organization that proclaims white people the highest level of creation, Jews the lowest, and all others "muds." It also claims the Holocaust of World War II is a Jewish myth fabricated to gain sympathy. After participating in a botched graffiti attack on a synagogue, Rudy questions his fitness as an Aryan. Then, when asked to prepare a report for his high school history class, he decides he can best serve his cause by proving the Holocaust never happened. He begins, certain of the outcome, but quickly finds his task more difficult than he imagined. His investigation leads him to letters containing a frightening family secret and to a diary written by a boy who died half a century earlier. The letters and diary weave a terrifying tale that invades his sleep and causes nightmares that transport him into the Holocaust. As his "night lessens" expose the lies underpinning Aryan Salvation, he rejects Judd's bigotry and sees Aryan Salvation as a tool to bring about a new horror. His vow to stop it almost makes him one of its victims.