Blend­ing fam­i­ly dra­ma with page-turn­ing sus­pense, Carl Wistreich’s Lethal Obses­sion con­fronts the eter­nal hatred one group has faced through­out his­to­ry in very human, very per­son­al terms, and hon­ors the unbreak­able will to sur­vive and begin anew. Gideon Wistre­ich is haunt­ed by visions of his family’s per­se­cu­tion across gen­er­a­tions. His visions com­pel him to aban­don his ambi­tion to become a lawyer and embark on a quest to under­stand why his fam­i­ly, and Jews as a peo­ple, have been tar­gets of hatred for mil­len­nia. On a deeply per­son­al lev­el, Gideon is tor­tured by survivor’s guilt, strug­gling to answer why his grand­fa­ther chose to flee east at the out­set of World War II. The deci­sion led to impris­on­ment by the Rus­sians in a gulag in Siberia — yet ulti­mate­ly saved his imme­di­ate fam­i­ly, while many of their edu­cat­ed and accom­plished rel­a­tives who remained in Poland per­ished. Gideon’s relent­less search for truth ulti­mate­ly places him in the crosshairs of a Car­di­nal des­tined to become the next Pope, incit­ing an encounter that will impact Gideon’s fam­i­ly for­ev­er. The mod­ern day nar­ra­tive and char­ac­ters are fic­tion­al and the ear­li­er gen­er­a­tions are cre­ative­ly drawn from real peo­ple and events record­ed in fam­i­ly mem­oirs, which describe those who sur­vived; and those who did not.