The lifelong friendship of two men, one the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, the other a virtually unknown Polish engineer, makes for a remarkable saga in the expert hands of O'Brien (winner of the 1997 Edgar for Best Fact Crime book for Power to Hurt). O'Brien's muscular prose adds vigor to a fascinating personal tale played out against the great moments of modern European history. Beginning with John Paul II's election to the papacy in 1978, the narrative recalls the near-idyllic boyhoods of the two principals, known then as Lolek (the future pope) and Jurek. Cast as a parallel biography, the book depicts the future pope as a gifted student, at once playful yet conscious of deeper meanings to reality. His best friend, less scholarly but also a vibrant spirit, is an equally compelling character. O'Brien explains that Kluger lost his entire family in the Holocaust and was imprisoned for years in Stalinist labor camps. Through all the drama, the two men maintained contact, and their friendship has continued into their old age. O'Brien discloses how the friends' relationship has affected events on the world stage, especially the Vatican's recognition of the state of Israel. Anyone intrigued by the often surprising confluences of history, politics and religion will relish this impressive study in faith, friendship and mutual respect. 25 photos, not seen by PW. 250,000 first printing; $250,000 ad/promo. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

O'Brien is the author of 11 books, including the best-selling novel Murder in Little Egypt, and his new work is so easily readable and beautifully written that it seems like a novel instead of an important biographical and religious study. Pointing out Pope John Paul II's distinctive and positive impact on the development of Catholic-Jewish relations, O'Brien considers the influence of the Pope's lifelong Jewish friend, Jerzy Kluger. He also gives historical background for changes in the policy of the Catholic Church and shows how the writings of the forward-looking French historian Jules Isaac have influenced Papal thought. A number of major books on Pope John Paul II have appeared recently, including John Kwitney's Man of the Century (LJ 9/15/97), and this is another major contribution that will be widely read.‘Paul M. Kaplan, Lake Villa District Lib., Ill. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Pope John Paul II has never forgotten where he came from, the town of Wadowice in southern Poland. Besides returning there on sentimental excursions, he has regularly organized reunions of his high-school class of 1938, one of whose members is Jerzy Kluger. Kluger has confided to O'Brien the unusual but very human story of his friendship with Lolek, the nickname of his famous friend. The impact on young Lolek of the genocidal storm that devastated Poland has been related in an outstanding biography, Man of the Century by Jonathan Kwitny [BKL Ag 97]. As for Kluger, a member of Wadowice's most prominent Jewish family, he escaped the Nazi invasion, was imprisoned in the Soviet gulag, and fought with the British in North Africa and Italy, where he settled after the war. Then in 1965 Kluger read a speech given in Rome by the archbishop of Krakow, one Karol Wojtyla. Could that be old Lolek? One cold call later, the warm reunions began producing the recollections, some touching, the rest traumatic, of their vanished Polish childhood that form half of O'Brien's text. The other half concerns the pope's enlistment of his friend in the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel. O'Brien's accent on Kluger's life (his family perished in the Holocaust) provides a personalized emotional base to the account of the Vatican's pruning of doctrinal deadwood about Judaism; however, O'Brien's portrait of the Kluger-Wojtyla friendship is what will unquestionably attract throngs of readers. --Gilbert Taylor