Former geologist John Wilson of Nanaimo continues to produce books at a dizzying pace. Among his five new titles this year is a novel, Flames of the Tiger (Kids Can $7.95), about a German teenager who is initially seduced by the pomp of Hitler's rise. With Berlin in ruins and the Russian army on its way, he helps a badly wounded Canadian soldier, telling the man his life story to help keep him conscious. As dawn breaks, the soldier recovers and helps Dieter and his sister survive. Details in Flames of the Tiger-like flaming horses running in terror and a soldier's description of Belsen-are not for the squeamish.

"It is not my intention to apologize for the Nazis,"; says Wilson. "They, and particularly the SS, richly deserve the abhorrence that the civilized world feels for the values they held and the atrocities they committed. What I have tried to do is imagine what it was like for those who came of age in the 1930s and '40s, indoctrinated from earliest days and swept up in circumstances they could never understand. To have been a teenager in Nazi Germany must have been immensely difficult, and to expect one to have had a rational post-war perspective is unreasonable. The lure of uniforms and flags and the flood of propaganda must have been next to irresistible. Dieter is probably exceptional for questioning as much as he does.";

Wilson says if there's an underlying message for his adventure story, it's to always question what people tell you is a self-evident truth, especially when everyone tells you the same thing. Viewers of CNN, take note. Wilson's other YA adventure novel is Adrift in Time (Ronsdale $9.95) about a teenager who rebels against his father on Mayne Island. Flames 1-55337-619-6 Adrift 1-55380-007-9

[BCBW Winter 2003]