A sidebar with Robert E. Kass.

Byline: Kelly Caplan

Robert E. Kass is a Detroit-based lawyer and author of the novel, "To Save the Nation," which was inspired by events that occurred when he was a young attorney practicing in an international law firm in Brussels, Belgium.

He recently shared his thoughts with Michigan Lawyers Weekly on the novel's disturbing true history.

Now that your novel has been published, how has the reception been? What sort of reader feedback have you gotten?

Reader feedback has been excellent. The book is a legal thriller with a strong human rights message. That message is strengthened by the epilogue, which brings the story to present day. When the reader realizes how much of the story is inspired by actual events, it's chilling.

What led you to tackle your first work of fiction?

I didn't want these events to be forgotten, and over the years there were many coincidences in my life that kept me thinking about the story.

The first major event was what was referred to as the "Dirty War" in Argentina in the 1970s. There was a right-wing military dictatorship, and a violent left-wing opposition. The military was frustrated with the rebels and decided to use its full force to eliminate them. The military "disappeared" 8,000-30,000 people. They were put in detention centers, tortured, and sometimes killed. Some were pregnant women, and their babies were taken from them under C-section. The mothers were killed, and the babies were either sold off by the military or adopted.

Some dissidents were told they were going to be transferred to remote areas of the country and needed inoculations against disease. In reality, they were drugged, stripped, and taken up in airplanes and dropped into the ocean in the dead of night, never to be seen again.

You mentioned coincidences that kept you thinking of the story.

There was an air crash involving an Argentine banker client of mine. His private jet crashed, and he was allegedly killed. Shortly thereafter, his international banking empire on four continents collapsed. Millions of dollars were missing. There was speculation that he didn't die in the crash, but that it was a set-up to make it look like he died.

The story is loosely inspired by this event. The banker's inside counsel, whom I knew well, died under torture when the Argentine military interrogated him in an effort to find the missing fortune.

After I left Belgium to return to practice law in the states, I wondered what actually happened and decided to do...