LOST KIN by Steve Anderson

The plight of the Cossacks in Russia and post-WWII Soviet Union isn’t common knowledge in the west, but the Cossacks’ story is nevertheless a human tragedy of epic proportions. The Cossacks were brutally repressed by Stalin’s regime and a fair number of them chose to throw in their lot with the invading Nazis. This sin in Stalin’s eyes was of course not forgotten and post-war, the Cossacks were rooted out by the invading Soviets and sometimes handed over to Stalin’s army by the Allies just for Stalin to make them disappear. An unknown number of Cossacks were lost in the end, though by some estimates as many as 50,000 Cossacks were repatriated to the Soviet army by the British army alone. In Anderson’s novel, American Captain Harry Kasper stumbles onto Cossack refugees in post-war Munich when a tip comes in that leads to a murder with shadowy connections to Harry’s brother Max, who abandoned the Kasper family for a theatre career in Germany before WWII. Max emerges at a time when Harry is somewhat an outsider in the American military bureaucracy governing the western portion of Germany and struggling to find a way to do some good in the hopelessly-corrupt first stages of Germany’s rebuilding. Max and Harry begin to rebuild their relationship as layer upon layer of their characters are revealed, propelling the story forward. Scenes are portrayed with a pessimistic, melancholy mood that seems fitting of the time and place and puts off a foreboding vibe that sacrifices must be made to save lives. Love and loyalty, deception and betrayal, and the evil and the just permeate this satisfying tale of an under-appreciated saga of a people truly stuck between a rock and a hard place. Lost Kin is the third in a series, and each of Harry’s and Max’s war-time exploits are covered in the first two books, although Lost Kin can be read as a stand-alone.