Arditti, Michael A Sea Change.

Arditti's beautifully crafted and emotionally satisfying novel is set aboard Hamburg-America Line's infamous passenger ship ST. LOUIS during that vessel's aborted 1939 "Voyage of the Damned" carrying 900+ German Jewish refugee asylum-seekers from Hamburg across the Atlantic to Havana, Cuba. His work hones close to the actual events which occurred aboard the ST. LOUIS and includes as characters a number of real life actors in the drama, including the ship's heroic master, Captain Gustav Schröder as well as the captain's vile nemesis, 2nd Class Steward and Nazi stooge Otto Schiendick. Refused entry at Havana and other North American ports, the liner eventually was forced to return to Europe, where most of the refugees subsequently perished during the Second World War.

The novel's real center, however, is a 15 year old "assimilated" Jewish boy (Karl Frankel-Hirsch) from Berlin traveling aboard the ST. LOUIS with his family towards what they hope will be the safety of the New World. As the ST. LOUIS turns from a place of asylum into a virtual prison ship wandering the ocean looking for safe haven, young Karl grows up emotionally, intellectually and sexually. The novel's emotional climax occurs when Karl celebrates his belated Bar Mitzvah aboard the ST. LOUIS, a moment of profound sentiment in Arditti's modern day Bildungsroman. Note that A Sea Change was published in only a paperback edition.