In 1940, Charles A. Lindbergh beats Franklin D. Roosevelt and becomes President of the USA. Young Philip Roth, seven years old, his brother Sandy, 12, and their parents have been doing all right until then. They survived the Depression, because Philip's father had been an insurance salesman for a large company. They live in a friendly, though not prosperous Jewish area of New Jersey.

Now they fear for their lives.

This is the plot of The Plot Against America, Philip Roth's latest novel about an alternative America.

The power of the novel is that it convinces us that it did come true.

Powerful forces in the U.S. always favoured Hitler's regime and were opposed to the Americans joining the Allies against Nazi Germany.

Lindbergh visited Nazi Germany a number of times after he became famous for being the first man to make a solo crossing of the Atlantic.

He became more famous when the Lindberghs' baby son was kidnapped and found murdered weeks later. All he had to do was walk into the 1940 Republican convention, leave his bid to the last minute, and he could have had taken the White House.

Lindbergh did not make a play for power. But in Roth's novel, he wins office easily. The Jewish people of America assume they will be persecuted immediately. Instead, opinion among them is softened up.

It's only in 1942 that they are divided and conquered. The process is slow, inexorable, and every step involves the Roth family directly.

The Plot Against America is a novel of both breathtaking suspense and good humour. Its protagonists are funny, passionate people, and, while they are all compromised in some way, they are each heroic in other ways. They learn more about themselves than about politics. And most of them do survive.