Sneak Peek

Manuel Pelaez

The Bond Reviewed by Nicole Olson, Hollywood Book Reviews

A coming of age story suited for young and old alike—The Bond by author Manuel Pelaez tells a marvelous tale of a boy with a special friend. Jeremy is a young boy trying to get noticed in California. His mom works in the talent industry and takes him to and from auditions nearly every day. While she offers encouragement and advice, Jeremy storms away to his room when they return home. Jeremy feels lost, incapable and misunderstood by everyone except his Blue Throat Triggerfish, Finn. This is no ordinary fish—he listens to Jeremy’s problems and even responds by nodding his head yes and no.

Not only does Jeremy feel like a failure because he cannot land a role or get noticed by a talent scout, he must navigate the hardship of growing up with parents who are separated. Though they are very close friends, Raymond and Carole are no longer together. In a coming of age story like Jeremy’s, parents play a large role. Since their home is incomplete, Jeremy must turn to his friend Finn to have connection and companionship.

Pelaez adds wonder and excitement to the typical coming of age story with Finn’s legendary history. Not only was he owned by a Great Samurai, he has his own magical properties as well. Finn turns The Bond into a saga, an adventure full of fantastic elements under the sea. With Finn’s help Jeremy finally finds where he belongs.

The narrator of The Bond speaks to the audience as if he was talking on a stage. Pelaez uses long and broken up sentences that makes the writing read like a theatrical performance. The narrator describes Jeremy’s experience in a believable way—it does not take long for the reader to feel as if they understand Jeremy perhaps even more than his parents do. Even though it is a coming of age story, it does not touch taboo subjects such as sex and drugs. The characters speak with clean and polite language. Though Jeremy is troubled, he is a very grateful and well-mannered young person.

Jeremy is a first generation Japanese American and his experience can resonate with children of immigrants of any culture.

INTERVIEW WITH Morris Wolff

Morris is the author of Whatever Happened to Raoul Wallenberg?, a book about Raoul Wallenberg.

NRM: What is your daily schedule during the pandemic? Morris Wolff: Well, it is actually diverse, a lot of fun and quite healthy! I get up about 6 AM and do yoga for an hour, with meditation and stretching, then a choice of early breakfast prepared by my angel-wife, Patricia. I get a choice of oatmeal with fruit or two eggs up with turkey bacon. She is my manager and best friend and watches what I eat.

Then out the door for a two-hour 14-mile bike ride through the woods and quiet places of where we live now in Florida. I smell the clean early morning air, I hear the birds sing to each

other, and I chime in with songs of my own. I am a bit of a free spirit. “Different” is the word my wife uses to describe me to her friends.

I love this quiet, undisturbed early morning quiet and alone time. It allows for creative moments, like writing a poem in my head for my father’s “123rd birthday” as I am meditating on wheels and bike riding. The other morning I found the lines of a budding poem in my head. I shaped the poem as I rode the first six mile

Then I stop at a local restaurant, while the poem is still “hot” and borrow a pen and paper, and jot down a rough draft of the first lines. I refine it when I get home. The basic poem came to me in my head while I was riding. When I get back home I either work on refining the poem or write some final chapters on my next book, which is called “Lucky Conversations.” The second book goes to my publisher on November 30, my 84th birthday... just five days away. Hooray!!

NRM: Other than being a hero and saving the lives of several Jews, what is it about Raoul Wallenberg that you admire the most? MW: Many things. I love his incredible selflessness and his deep concern for others. Also, his great sense of organization. Working in Budapest to save the Jews, Wallenberg assembled a workforce of 50 volunteers. He purchased buildings and placed the endangered Jews into “safe houses” in apartments in the big buildings, and went to train stations to pull Jews off the trains headed to Auschwitz, Dachau and other death camps, saved 100,000 lives. He placed a Swedish flag over the buildings and prevented the nazis from entering “swedish embassy territory.” Dachau and the other death camps. He was a saint. When asked why he did this work, he answered, “I had no choice!” He journeyed from Sweden at age 32, at the request of the US War refugee board, to do this great work and was kidnapped by the Russians at the end of the War. He was never seen in freedom since 1945. I took up the effort to rescue him in the spring of 1983. I sued the USSR in US District Court.

NRM: Let’s talk about your book, Whatever Happened to Raoul Wallenberg. Working on the book must have taken a lot of dedication especially when it came to research and developing a narrative—what made you decide to write about Wallenberg and his whereabouts? MW: I wanted the world to know that he was still alive after 39 years isolated by the Russians in Siberia and that we wanted to bring him home. I did my lawsuit in US federal court pro bono and won a $39 million dollar verdict. “That has to be my leverage point for confronting the Russians and forcing their hand in granting his release,” that is what I thought. It is quite a story of Israeli Mossad rescue efforts, organized by me, and includes a back-stabbing hypocritical betrayal of Wallenberg by our government, Chief Justice Roberts, as White House Legal Counsel under Ronald Reagan was directly complicit in the betrayal.

NRM: How do you want people to keep your story alive? MW: That is a good question. Times have changed. We now have a new Jewish Secretary of State chosen by President Biden. This fact is now public. His father, Samuel “Sam” Pisar, a good friend of mine, was saved as a child at age 8 by American tanks and troops from the Holocaust, picked up from the ground by a black tank driver.

Professor Sam Pisar had a deep and passionate interest in Raoul Wallenberg, and his fate. Sam Pisar was the first professor to come out in support of my Wallenberg litigation against the Russians. And now his son is our new Secretary of State and is deeply committed to finding out the truth about Wallenberg’s fate.

Professor Sam Pisar read and edited the complaint that I filed in federal court, along with other distinguished international law professors. His son and I have plans to meet soon after the New Year. We will determine whether top officials in the White House during the Reagan administration actually placed a severe “roadblock” and interfered with earnest efforts to rescue Raoul. In October of 1983, plans were being made in Washington to bring Raoul Wallenberg “home” to a hero’s reception and a new home in Washington DC.

We could have done it. He was only 72, and alive. The Soviet government admitted he was alive and they wanted an exchange. What happened? I will meet with the Secretary of State. A new investigation will be made. We will find out.