Winterman's Letter

By Alan R.M. Thrush

Ideal gift for readers who enjoyed 'Birdsong'.

From World War One comes a novel to deliver the conflict's soul, a moral reckoning that moves beyond the trenches to explore effect and aftermath. Finely researched, this historically accurate, character-driven narrative is something more than fiction. It is emotional truth . . .

In the war's final months, a young woman begins a search for two British soldiers missing in battle. Hampered by lack of official confirmation of their fate, she must discover it for herself; they are her lovers. Yet even as her quest yields clues, there is something she cannot know: one of them wrote a letter that was never sent, a letter meant for her but taken by the advancing German Army. Its pages contain a bitter secret as well as answers to the questions at the centre of her torment: Can there be any hope? Should she hold on? Should she wait for their return?

Knowing only worry, anguish and wretched distress, the stricken woman begins to unearth details of the carnage that has enveloped her men at the front, a gradually increasing knowledge that forces her to glimpse the brutal realities of the fighting across the Channel as both sides continue the battle - millions of young men. One of them is the German officer who took the letter intended for her. He is determined to deliver it, for the pages he now carries have become his burden, his debt of honour to a worthy enemy. Just how far will he go?

Winterman's Letter, sister story to the epic A Salient in Flanders, is a novel to thrust the reader as mercilessly into the furnace of war as it does into the troubled psyches of its characters: the women who wait for their men gone to fight; the gravely wounded shipped home to heal, their bodies broken and some of them blind; the soldiers themselves . . .

Independent reader acclaim for Winterman's Letter:

"Moving and compelling."
"Vivid, almost tangible, battlefield imagery."
"A haunting, masterfully woven tale of love, loss and honour."
"First rate, even for first time readers of this genre."

To read the story, click below the book cover: Read Sample

Genres: World War 1 historical fiction; British literary fiction; war fiction

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0D6Z6T51V
• ISBN13: 9798328116909
• Release Date: June 2024
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 222 Pages
• Weight: 0.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.1" x 7.8"