The Last Alchemist

The Last Alchemist What if an aging Nazi scientist hid away on an American farm, pretending that he was dead because he knew too much? This thriller, grounded in historical research, reveals the frightening prospect of "Hitler's children." Jake Kincaid's chance encounter with an elderly scientist, who calls himself an alchemist, introduces him to a diabolical plot. A past associate of the alchemist has reanimated a mad dream of a eugenics program begun with Nazi officers and Scandinavian women. In a new age of genetic research, the neo-Nazi program has become a deadly threat to world stability. Jake, who dreams of making films, supports himself by joining his friend Tom in painting houses. Their work at Red Cat Farm leads to his meeting Ezra, the modern-day alchemist who seems like a modern magician. At the farm, he also meets Laura and Ali, college art majors and designers who have brought children with special needs to visit the farm. Jake's romance with fashion designer Ali offers an exciting new life for them, except for one thing: they are now threatened by neo-Nazis and entangled in a dangerous mesh of corporate and political intrigue.

The Last Alchemist is a story of suspense and mystery. Jake Kincaid is drawn into the puzzle of the life of an aging doctor-scientist who calls himself an alchemist. He begins to develop a film documentary that explores the impact of issues of the Second World War, from Nazi science to antisemitism to the thousand or more lebensborn children born during World War II period. 

Robert McParland is the author of Cultural Memory, Consciousness, and the Modernist Novel (2022), The People We Meet in Stories (2020), Philosophy and Literary Modernism (2019), Bestseller (2018), From Native Son to King's Men: The Literary Landscape of the 1940s (2017), Citizen Steinbeck (2016), Beyond Gatsby: How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped Culture (2015), and Charles Dickens's American Audience (2010). He is a songwriter and playwright.