Every child thinks of his father as a hero and the father mostly tries to keep that idea alive in the mind of his children. Same was the case with Stewart Dubinsky and his father, Stewart was told that his father was a legend of the Second World War.
It was his father who went into the devil’s nest to save the love of his life and returned safely with her. All his life Stewart felt proud of his father’s performance but when his father died the boy finally came to know about the truth and was really disappointed. His father was lying to him this whole time and he was actually not a war hero at all rather he got arrested during the war and was imprisoned by the enemy.
There were several evidence that his father was in prison all that time and during that crucial time Stewart’s father wrote letters home and also his feelings while living in that cage. Everything became so hard to digest for the boy who grew up listening to the heroic stories of his father and now that statue has fallen head down. There were letters that told about the court martial of his father because he failed to follow orders.
Only Scott Turow could have written a story such as this one in which a boy is desperate to know the truth and the more he finds the more confusing his life becomes. Not to forget Edward Herrmann’s voice in narration who has worked as the father and son in this novel and has tried hard to keep separate voices for them. The story is not matched to Innocent and Identical because it is not related to the present and moreover the courtroom drama don’t exist. There are some courtroom scenes in the novel but they are discussed only in the letters and don’t exist in the present.
