John W. Warner IV’s Little Anton is a story to get lost in. Teetering between fact and fiction, it’s a trove of information and historical events we would have remembered from high school classes had we been paying attention. Then it slides off-center into the occult where believability meets intrigue. Add a sexy and daring heroine to a mix of real-life characters that include Adolph Hitler, Ferdinand Porsche, Sir Winston Churchill, Ettore Bugatti, and long-distance flying record-holder pilot Amy Johnson, and Mr. Warner’s novel in three parts seems to have something for everyone.
It’s that unsettling time between the two world wars. Europe is struggling to find her place; countries struggle to repair their cities and economies. But these also are years of innovation and invention, challenging long-held beliefs and fears and bursting open a future few saw coming. Clarence Birdseye introduced frozen foods; Nestle, tinned evaporated milk; and Danish painter Einer Wegener became Lili Elbe, the inspiration for the 2015 movie The Danish Girl starring Eddie Redmayne. Einstein takes a stand against Nazism and exiles himself from his hometown of Berlin. ALCOA shares a new metal with the world.
Deftly, Warner threads industrial history, the incipient women’s movement, international relations, America’s foreign policy, and engineering challenges with the thrills and dangers of racing — both on the ground and in the air. The Great War tore apart families and ruined cities and countryside, but it also generated fierce national pride and rivalry, an atmosphere that encouraged Hitler’s not-so-clandestine efforts to re-arm his struggling country.
Presented as historical fiction, Little Anton is also a love story, a spy novel, and a book about engines, speed, adventure, war and intrigue. Although it begins as a paean to Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, the genius behind the Porsche automobile and the Volkswagen “bug,” the fictional Sunderlands, Briggs and Lainey and their spirited daughter, Bea, soon take center stage.
As parents, Briggs and Lainey are dicey role models, taking their daughter on African safaris (where people die!) and tolerating her dangerous hobbies: target shooting, driving fast cars, and flying — back when airplanes were made of wood and canvas. Lady Bea, as she is rightfully called, and her debutante friends live a lavish lifestyle in British society, gossiping over tea about suitors and hemlines.
Porsche, on the other hand, was the son of a tinsmith in a tiny town in Austria. Obsessed with batteries, electricity and any mechanical devices he could get his hands on, Ferdinand was a misfit in his family. He had to be his own source of encouragement and master of his own future. His romance with voltage, however, leads him to work with two of Germany’s most powerful automobile companies: first Mercedes, then Auto Union. His genius leads him to Hitler.