Kaplan's Quest


Fiction - Historical - Event/Era
220 Pages
Reviewed on 10/15/2014
Buy on Amazon

This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Free Book Program, which is open to all readers and is completely free. The author will provide you with a free copy of their book in exchange for an honest review. You and the author will discuss what sites you will post your review to and what kind of copy of the book you would like to receive (eBook, PDF, Word, paperback, etc.). To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email.

This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Review Exchange Program, which is open to all authors and is completely free. Simply put, you agree to provide an honest review an author's book in exchange for the author doing the same for you. What sites your reviews are posted on (B&N, Amazon, etc.) and whether you send digital (eBook, PDF, Word, etc.) or hard copies of your books to each other for review is up to you. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email, and be sure to describe your book or include a link to your Readers' Favorite review page or Amazon page.

This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Donation Program, which was created to help nonprofit and charitable organizations (schools, libraries, convalescent homes, soldier donation programs, etc.) by providing them with free books and to help authors garner more exposure for their work. This author is willing to donate free copies of their book in exchange for reviews (if circumstances allow) and the knowledge that their book is being read and enjoyed. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email. Be sure to tell the author who you are, what organization you are with, how many books you need, how they will be used, and the number of reviews, if any, you would be able to provide.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Raanan Geberer for Readers' Favorite

In Richard Steinitz’s Kaplan’s Quest, Shmuel Kaplan is a young Israeli academic who has always been haunted by the figure of his great-uncle Samuel Kaplan, for whom he was named. Samuel, a German Jew, was a champion shot-putter and came to Tel Aviv in 1935 for the Maccabia Games, an international competition for Jewish athletes, but for some inexplicable reason decided to return to Nazi Germany. Finally, Kaplan decides to visit Germany in hope of finding out more about his uncle’s fate. He is assisted by his Canadian-Jewish cousin Jack, also an academic and an athlete in his own right. After interviewing elderly people who had crossed paths with Samuel and looking at countless documents, Shmuel discovers that around the beginning of World War II, Samuel and several other physically fit Jewish athletes were forcibly recruited by an obsessed German officer to help discover and dig out a supposed ancient tunnel between France and England. Shmuel, shuttling back and forth between several countries, now seeks to discover the identities of the other young Jewish athletes as well.

Richard Steinitz’s Kaplan’s Quest is well written and will appeal to people interested in the history of World War II in Europe, people interested in Jewish history, and fans of historical fiction in general. Many Americans are used to headlines about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis but know next to nothing about the day-to-day lives of middle-class Israelis – and the book shows life inside Israel as well. Through the interviews with the elderly Europeans, Steinitz shows how the war disrupted people’s lives, both Jewish and non-Jewish. All in all, Kaplan’s Quest is an interesting, exciting book, a thinking person’s adventure story.