You Gotta Believe 
 Taken on purely factual terms, it would be easy to knock holes in this rather whimsical novel. But, given to a boy of twelve (the same age as its hero), it would make a fine introduction to World War Two and the Holocaust. And it even works for an adult reader willing to set aside disbelief and put himself into the mindset of a grieving, bereaved boy. And those used to a degree of magic realism in their fiction--even as applied to Holocaust subjects by authors such as Dara Horn or Jonathan Safran Foer--will find that the suspension of disbelief required here falls well within their powers. 
 Janis Cooke Newman sets the tone right at the beginning. On the day that the news of Pearl Harbor comes through the kitchen radio of his Irish-American New York family, Jack, the twelve-year-old protagonist, suddenly loses the ability to focus his eyes. Despite the heavy glasses that make him the target of bullies at school, everything not at the correct distance is a blur to him. But his disability sharpens another talent that he discovers he has: the ability to intuit when another person has a secret to hide. When tragedy suddenly strikes his family, he plays hookie from school and wanders the subways looking for Nazi spies. And believes that he has found one. 
 At this point, another story interacts with that of Jack. This follows a skilled Jewish mechanic named Jakob, living in Berlin before the War, making a living from his almost equally magic talent for fixing things. His story tells of his doomed love for a brave but terminally ill photographer, his attempts to keep them both alive as the Nazi net tightens, and the terror of his eventual escape and arrival in America. Though a heartbreaking story, there is nothing unbelievable about it except that the Holocaust itself defies rational belief; this part of the novel is carefully tied to known facts. 
 When man and boy, Jakob and Jack (the names are surely deliberate), meet up, they stumble upon one thing they can undertake together, the "Master Plan for Rescue" of the title, that promises to ensure the survival of at least a handful of victims of the War. This does require quite a big suspension of disbelief. We are firmly in the world of the radio series "Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy"--but then our Jack has been identifying with his namesake all along. It leads, as you might expect, to a nicely suspenseful climax. But there is nothing expected or childlike about Newman's avoidance of the usual happy ending. Her decision to jump ahead, salvaging the few precious things she can from the devastation of wartime, seems entirely appropriate to the period and the painful process of growing up.