The Detour: A NovelAndromeda Romano-Lax
Soho Press, February 2012
ISBN: 978-1616950491
In 1938, a lonely young German man is sent on a governmental errand to Italy, but he soon ends up on a mission of romance and self-discovery.
Ernst Vogler, a young art curator from Munich, is sent to Italy and charged with the task of bringing The Discus Thrower, recently acquired from Rome, back to Germany for inclusion in Hitler’s art collection. Ernst is accompanied by two Italian policemen - twin brothers - and must make the drive back to Munich on a tight deadline.
From the beginning, the mission goes wrong. Ernst arrives too late to see the sculpture crated and can only hope he is accompanying the real artwork and not a decoy. He has three days to get the sculpture across the border, but the Italian twins who have been assigned to escort him - Cosimo and Enzo - immediately deviate from the prescribed route.
As the miles fly past, the reader learns more about Vogler's life: his difficult relationship with the father he continually disappointed; the "strange variation" that set him apart from other children; the source of the scar that makes him so self-conscious; his loss of passion for anything but art, "itself a substitution for other losses."
Even while Ernst struggles to assert control, he begins to suspect that one or both of them are involved in a plot to steal the sculpture. Following an accident, Ernst is forced to temporarily abandon his assignment, detouring to the twins' hometown in the Piedmont region of Italy. What follows is a race against the clock that will include death, retribution, and finally, love.
Told in first person by Ernst, looking back ten years after the events of the novel unfolded, his perspective on his task and on the war is clouded by the harrowing experiences he had between 1938 and 1945. Although the characters in the book are fictional, The Detour deals with a factual event: the purchase of The Discus Thrower by Hitler in 1938 and its repatriation ten years later. The Detour will appeal to those interested in historical fiction, particularly Nazi Germany.
ANDROMEDA ROMANO-LAX was born 1970 in Chicago, and she is the author of numerous works of nonfiction and Director of the 49 Alaska Writing Center. Her first novel, The Spanish Bow, was a New York Times Editor's Choice and was translated into 11 languages. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her husband and two children.
ISBN: 978-1616950491; ISBN10: 1616950498; Imprint: Soho Press; On Sale: 2/14/2012; Format: Hardcover; Pages: 320; $25.00
