cover image Not by the Sword: How the Love of a Cantor and His Family Transformed a Klansman

Not by the Sword: How the Love of a Cantor and His Family Transformed a Klansman

Kathryn Watterson. Simon & Schuster, $22.5 (360pp) ISBN 978-0-671-86893-2

This is a heartwarming account by Princeton nonfiction writing teacher Watterson (Growing into Love) of a remarkable conversion. Larry Trapp, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Nebraska, harassed Jews, Asians and African Americans in Lincoln on the phone and through the mail. But Cantor Michael Weisser, one of his targets, returned hate with kindness and humanity; and, in the process, he turned Trapp, a diabetic who had lost both legs to the disease and was going blind, completely around. Trapp, who converted to Judaism, became not only a lecturer against his former causes but a resident of the Weisser home until his death in 1992. Watterson suggets that Weisser was able to be so understanding because he, too, had been the product of a broken home, an orphanage and prison. Photos. (Mar.)