As a Jewish slave of the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp, Eli Hessel works on the Nazi’s V-2 missile program. Terror and death, his constant companions, make it nearly impossible to remember that he is a living, breathing human being suffering utterly inhumane conditions. He toils in the tunnels dug deep in the Harz Mountains of Germany, always hungry, always thirsty, always fighting to survive. The SS, especially SS-Hauptscharführer Erwin “Horse Head” Busta, torment Eli and his fellow prisoners through
Eli moves to New York, marries, becomes a father, and earns his college degrees. And then, another miracle: he lands a job with the American space program, NASA, and works at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. His demons, however, haven’t left; indeed, some of them are literally in the flesh: the Nazi scientists at Dora-Mittelbau are now the beloved, much-lauded scientists making it possible for the United States to have a space program. That the men complicit in and, indeed, responsible for, the death
In the Shadow of Dora is as ambitious as it is profound. Patrick Hicks has a gifted ability for writing gritty, vivid realism. From the lice biting inside Eli’s camp uniform and the sickening thud of a SS guard’s truncheon on an inmate’s skull, to the clacking typewriters and ringing telephones inside NASA offices to slabs of ice falling from Apollo 11’s fuel tanks, Hicks engages all five senses with startling clarity. Hicks’ thorough research provides compelling historical details, both for Dora-Mittelbau