Leo Cohen

Autobiography of a Lesser God Leo Cohen

Selwyn Berner is the lesser god of this novel. Rooted in America, Europe and WWII it begins with three short stories about critical people in Selwyn Bergner's life. Selwyn's autobiography then weaves these stories into his own. It involves shadowy people, questionable alignments, skimming cash and at least one murder, probably more. Selwyn Bergner and his cousins, Naomi and Norman Figler, live next to each other in a row house in Philadelphia as WWII initiates the end of the Depression. Norman, aka Chickie, is drafted on his high school graduation and D-Day takes him to Europe and through Southern Germany to the surviving remnants of a concentration camp outside of Flossenbuerg, Austria. It is there that Chickie is introduced to the Irgun, a shadowy Israeli organization smuggling displaced Jews out of Europe and into Israel. This involves him with a dark figure who has created a 'Robin Hood' action to convince mid-level Nazis to 'contribute' stolen jewelry and art work to the Israeli emigration cause. An American, Nathan Stern-Guilbert, devises a plan to smuggle these valuables to America where they are converted to cash through the business of Sid Bergner, Selwyn's father, and then sent back to Irgun in Europe.

But someone has been skimming, and when his father disappears it looks as if he is the thief. But Selwyn refuses to believe it, and with the help of

cousin Naomi and Selwyn's friend, David Bierman, he chases down clues to his father's disappearance. But while Selwyn's discoveries find the truth, that truth, as Selwyn himself says in his autobiography, leaves him angry and quite literally up in the air above a yard full of subway cars.