An American Jew in … Not Quite Paris

Kellerman

MightyWords

May 3, 2001

Book writing is a solitary profession. As the sole author of my works, I take the credit, I take the blame. About once a year, usually when my hardcover book is published, I am encouraged to venture out of my cocoon to publicize my work on what is known in the biz as the book tour. I like book tours. They allow me to do some face-to-face interaction with those who buy and read my books. My fans are wonderful — honest and sincere. I get feedback — mostly good, sometimes not so good, but always given with an honorable heart. Why else would they stand in line, sometimes for over an hour, just to have their books inked with my scrawl?

I also like book tours because I like to travel. I’ve enjoyed visiting almost every state in the U.S., and most of the major cities. Once in a while, my husband, the New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Kellerman, and I have done joint book tours, mostly out of the country. Jonathan and I are close and doing the circuit together minimizes our time apart. Three years ago, when we went to the land down under, we also took the kids. It was fabulous.

But even the foreign tours could not have prepared me for my upcoming tour in Germany. First of all, I was going without Jonathan and the kids, for a full ten days. I would miss them terribly. And, there was that picayune fact that I was going to Germany. As a modern Orthodox Jewish woman, I had strong feelings about visiting a country that just sixty years ago, had played judge, jury, and executioner to six million of my people, ten million human beings in total. Though Hitler’s “final solution” never came to pass, damn if he didn’t die trying to implement it. How would I feel about Germany and the Germans? How would they feel about me? Come join me and find out.