Historical Fiction Virtual Blog Tours
Presents…
Eleos
By D.R. Bell
The discovery of a valise of old letters
written to his Armenian grandfather from an Auschwitz survivor starts Avi
Arutiyan on an odyssey to uncover the mystery surrounding his grandfather’s
unsolved death. From the killing fields of Anatolia to the trial of Adolf
Eichmann, Avi’s quest opens a door into intersecting paths and dark secrets of
three families, stretching back to 1915.
How do these things happen time and again:
the Holocaust was preceded by the Armenian Genocide, and followed by the
killing fields of Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Who were the people behind
them? Eleos is a story of saviors and murderers, of bystanders and of those
that don’t fall into an easy-to-classify category. Hopefully the book can serve
as a reminder to protect our own humanity, because ultimately the battlefield
is inside all of us.
Praise for Eleos
“Bell
masterfully combines his mystery story with an unflinching look at the 20th
century’s bleakest tragedies. A beautiful . . . challengingly complex tale of
the ramifications of history.”
Kirkus Reviews
Excerpt
In the glass cage, the little man listened, unmoved. He
didn’t consider himself guilty. Not in the sense of indictment. You see a man alone, isolated and despised, and you want
to pity that man. But not him. I couldn’t understand him human-to-human; he was
somehow from a different place. He had all the physical characteristics of a
human being and yet he was different. What did the extermination even mean to
him? He didn’t remember where, when and how many he sent to their deaths. But he
remembered nice dinners he had. From the Wannsee conference that planned a mass
murder, he remembered having cognac by the fireplace. Here was Adolf Eichmann,
in the dock, very ordinary, very harmless. But when he had the power… If they won the war, what would he have looked
like?
That night I had another dream of dancing children. They wore
school uniforms, the girls in white blouses and dark-blue skirts, the boys in
white short-sleeves and black pants. Shirts and blouses were emblazed with a
school logo of a tree being consumed by a fire. I couldn’t see their faces in
the darkness. The children took each other’s hands and formed a large circle.
All, but one boy that held a torch. The boy threw the torch into the middle and
a great pyre lit up, hissing and crackling. I was outside of their circle and
even there I felt the immense heat and took a step back. But the children
didn’t mind. The boy that had the torch joined the circle, and they began to
dance: two steps counterclockwise, kicked off their left leg, then their right
one, two more steps. They danced silently, with the roar of the pyre being the
only terrible music. Their faces were lit up by the orange flames, but I still
couldn’t see their features. They went faster and faster. Soon they were dancing
on their toes. And then they defied gravity and rose off the cold ground, first
by a foot, then a yard, then the circle became a beautiful rotating blur that
went up higher and higher, above the pyre, above the embers, into the dark sky.
I woke up in a cold sweat and remembered that we had school
children visit the museum two days prior, and last night I walked by a building
where they burned some old leaves.
Ten weeks into the trial, Eichmann finally took the stand. He
looked different, grayish, afraid at last. In a low voice he told us the story
of his misfortune. He was no anti-Semite. He was nobody important; he just
happened to have taken up Jews as his specialty. He worked to help the Jews. He
had always sought peaceful solutions, but like Pontius Pilate he had no choice.
He never acted on his own initiative. Documents had been altered. Colleagues
lied. He did not remember this, and he did not remember that. 115 skeletons for
research? He did not remember. His name in the letter? OK, but he was not
authorized. In Hungary, he was “marginally involved.” He was simply an
“observer.” He was “unlucky.” He was the victim. The Washington Post
found “dignity” in Eichmann.
For two months in that
courtroom, he was a puzzle, an enigma to me. I couldn’t grasp the essence of
his humanity. Until he opened his mouth and said that one sentence:
“The question
of conscience is a matter for the head of the state.”
And that’s
when I finally saw inside of him. Human beings have a conscience. Sometimes we
blocked it in order to survive a bit longer, but it was always there. He didn’t
have one, he gave his up voluntarily and permanently. He was a clever,
malevolent non-human that feasted on power.
Giveaway
During the Blog Tour,
we are giving away one eBook and one paperback copy of ELEOS! You can enter HERE!
Giveaway
Rules
• Giveaway
ends at 11:59 pm EST on July 15th. You must be 18 or older to enter.
• Giveaway is open internationally.
• Only one entry per household.
• All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any
suspicion of fraud is decided upon by blog/site owner and the sponsor, and
entrants may be disqualified at our discretion.
• The winner has 48 hours to claim prize or a new winner is chosen.
Pick up your copy of
Eleos
D.R.
Bell
I didn’t plan to become a writer. A few years
ago, a friend’s death prompted me to ask what would be the one thing I regret
not doing. I’ve always been an avid reader but have not had the courage to
write. And I made a New Year resolution to write a book. That’s how The Great
Game came about. I try to write about serious topics but wrap them into an action-filled
story. While all my books are entirely fictional, each of them carries a
Commentary how the fiction is rooted in facts and realities of current events.
The first three books
– The Metronome, The Great Game, and The Outer Circle – form a trilogy, where
the lives the seemingly unconnected characters intersect against the backdrop
of a turbulent power game between United States, China, and Russia.
Unfortunately, some of the events described there are now happening in real
life.
Marshland is a detective
story set in modern Los Angeles, focused on the impact that internet and social
media can have on our lives and their potential for unscrupulous abuse by those
in power.
The latest project,
Eleos, is a historic fiction set primarily during the time of the Eichmann’s
trial. In a way, it’s a personal investigation into how events like the
Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide become possible.
Connect with D.R.
Bell:
WEBSITE • FACEBOOK • GOODREADS
Thank you so much for hosting the ELEOS blog tour! We appreciate the support!
ReplyDeleteAmy
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