The White Man's War

About the Book

An American Jew develops an uneasy friendship with an aloof black seaman from Kenya during World War II. The seaman, wanted for murder, jumps ship off the South African coast. The American assumes they will never see each other again. At loose ends following the war, and in response to a newspaper ad placed by a German woman, he returns to Africa on a strange mission - to find any information about her soldier-husband who disappeared while serving with an army detachment in Machakos, a small military garrison in German East Africa. His search unexpectedly thrusts him into Kenya’s struggle for independence from Great Britain.

About the Author

Having begun his writing career at an age when most men are satisfied to kick back and relax, Sidney B. Kurtz has written three books with roots in World War II. The first tells of a family’s adventures after leaving Latvia for the U.S. in 1912. The second and third books concern families that managed to escape from German-occupied Europe before and during the war. Mr. Kurtz grew up in the congested and mostly immigrant-inhabited neighborhood of North Philadelphia, where the streets were the playgrounds, and where horse-drawn wagons shared space with sidewalk vendors hawking freshly made horse radish.