 DECEMBER 5 • 2019 | 41

D

etroit attorney Robert 
Kass has published his 
first novel, To Save the 
Nation (Carob Tree Press), a 
labor of love that took nearly 20 
years from conception to print. 
The book’
s protagonist, ide-
alistic Detroit attorney David 
Winkler, is on a Caribbean 
vacation when he stumbles onto 
a situation that seems difficult 
to believe. A young woman 
who grew up in Uruguay has 
learned her birth parents were 
Argentinians who were among 
the 30,000 leftist dissidents who 
disappeared during the “Dirty 
War” of the 1970s. 
Her birth father, a wealthy 
banker, was supposedly 

killed in a small plane accident, 
but the charred body that was 
supposedly his had no head or 
hands. There was no positive 
identification and no formal 
investigation was done. After 
his reported death, the banker’
s 
financial empire collapsed, and 
his fortune disappeared. The 
woman hires Winkler to inves-
tigate whether the banker is still 
alive.
“I didn’
t really pick the topic; 
it picked me,
” said Kass of 
Huntington Woods. 
As an international attorney 
in Belgium in the 1970s, Kass 
had a client like the banker in 
the novel; he was killed in a 
small plane crash, after which 
his banks collapsed. As in the 
novel, there were rumors he 
hadn’
t been on the plane at all. 
Kass also knew the banker’
s 
in-house counsel, who died 
under torture after the plane 
crash and financial collapse. 
“Over the years there have 
been so many people in my life 
who have had something to do 
with this story that it seemed I 
couldn’
t get away from it,
” Kass 
said. 
A client at his Detroit law 
firm was the banker’
s cous-
in, who had visited him in 

Argentina. At a graduation 
party, Kass met someone who 
had lost a lot of money when 
the banker’
s financial empire 
collapsed; his mother was best 
friends with the 
widow of the bank-
er’
s in-house counsel. 
Kass interviewed the 
widow during a trip 
to Argentina in 2010. 
During the same 
trip, he also spoke 
with some of the 500 
people taken at birth 
from their mothers 
— who were then 
killed — and raised by parents 
in the Argentina political power 
elite. About 100 of them have 
been reunited with their birth 
families through DNA testing, 
he said.
Kass spoke to the other side 
as well. The Spanish tutor he 
hired in Michigan before his 
Argentina trip was from an 
Argentinian military family, 
and his stepfather had been a 
colonel during the “Dirty War.
” 
He was eager to share his side 
of the story with Kass. During 
their meeting, he justified the 
army’
s actions, saying the mili-
tary had done what they’
d had 
to do “to save the nation.
” Kass 
adopted the phrase as his book 
title. 
Kass admits he was nervous 
about the interview. “That 

morning, I woke up very early, 
in a sweat, asking myself why I 
was risking my own safety and 
that of my wife, who accompa-
nied me, to interview someone 
involved in the murder 
of thousands of peo-
ple.
” 
After nearly two 
decades of research, 
mostly during vaca-
tions, Kass decided 
to write it as a novel 
when he couldn’
t get 
enough information 
about how the actual 
story ended.
Kass describes the book as 
“a legal thriller with a human 
rights message” that’
s still rele-
vant today. Political dissidents 
and journalists have disap-
peared in 108 countries around 
the world, with 45,000 cases in 
92 nations pending before the 
United Nations, he said. An 
epilogue to the novel provides 
resources for further study on 
“enforced disappearances.
”
Be wary of the slippery slope, 
said Kass; when a country feels 
threatened, it’
s easy to abandon 
civil and human rights.
Kass has also written three 
nonfiction books about estate 
planning and administration.
To Save the Nation is available 
from Amazon as a paperback 
and soon as an e-book, and in 
audio format from Audible. 

Over the years, so many 
people in my life had something 
to do with this story I couldn’t 
get away from it.

— BOB KASS 

Bob Kass

Attorney Bob Kass says his thriller 
was 20 years in the making.

Arts&Life

Labor of Love
Attorney pens thriller based on international 
intrigue that touched his life.

BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

