The Spider's Web

This book, by Laura E. Williams, is an examination of the problem of anti-Semitism in today's world, relating this to the skinhead movement.

The two main characters are Lexi, a young teenager who is skinhead, and Ursula, and older woman who once lived in Germany.

Lexi has some major difficulties at home and has fallen in with a group of skinheads who espouse the philosophy of hating non-whites and Jews. She has shaved her head and had a Nazi tatoo put on to the left side of her head. One night she's involved in spray-painting a Jewish synagogue. She ends up being chased and takes refuge in Ursula's home where she meets her.

Ursula, meanwhile, is remembering when she was a young girl in Germany and marched in pro-Hitler marches. At first she is friends with a Jewish family, believing that there are "good" Jews and that Hitler is talking only about the "bad" Jews, but things get worse. Finally, she is partly responsible for the Gestapo taking the "good" Jewish friends of hers. It's a shame she felt for her entire life. She finally realized that the ideas that Hitler promoted were insane, and that she herself was part of that insanity, at least for a while.

Meanwhile, Lexi's friends end up invading Ursula's house and injuring her, and then they set their sites on something higher; setting fire to the neighborhood synagogue.

The question becomes, of course, will Lexi realize what she is doing, especially since her fervor for the group has infected her younger sister who decides to also join the skinhead group.

There is no doubt that the power of hatred is very great, and that it's growing. The fact that many people believe the holocaust never actually happened is just one example of this refusal to deal with reality. The book shows the tactics of these types who hide in the dark and strike out at individuals that have never hurt them at all.

It also shows how people can be caught up in the frenzy of the times, as Ursula was when she was younger and as Lexi's younger sister has now. The book helps to put a personal face on this hatred and the results of that hatred. It's not a happy book in any sense of the term, but it's a good book and an important book, especially for these times.

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