Читать книгу Three to a Loaf - Michael J. Goodspeed - Страница 2

About this Book

Rory Ferrall, a young Canadian officer of Anglo-German descent, is wounded and disfigured at the battle of Ypres during the First World War. After he’s shipped back to a convalescent hospital in Britain, his night terrors in German catch the attention of British Military Intelligence. Rory’s German-speaking North American background is invaluable to war planners desperate to discover Germany’s plans.

When the Allies capture a German-American officer, one of many who had left the U.S. to fight for the Fatherland, Rory is trained to impersonate him. He then “escapes” back to Germany to infiltrate the German General Staff and discover their top-secret plan to break the stalemate on the Western Front. In Germany, however, Ferrall’s mission is jeopardized when his identity become suspect, then further complicated when he becomes involved with an intelligent and free-thinking German nurse.

Suspense, moral and personal quandaries, and historical detail are all woven together with a realism that resonates as sharply today as it did nearly a century ago. The context of Three to a Loaf has been meticulously researched with original material drawn from regimental, national, and archived intelligence sources.

More than a page-turning novel of war and espionage, Three to a Loaf vividly portrays societies and individuals pushed to the breaking point. Goodspeed artfully blends the tension of a thriller with period detail and the detached commentary of a nitty-gritty travelogue. As an experienced soldier himself, the author tops it all with psychological understanding of a harried man facing soul-destroying ethical decisions.

From the participants’ eyes we glimpse the harrowing fate awaiting the losers of the world’s first total war. Goodspeed’s book is as much an explanation of how and why the world was driven to embrace the 20th century’s most brutal ideologies as it is a tale of how one man preserves his spirit and dignity in hopeless times.

In tracing the folly and desperation of a flailing civilization that has spun horribly out of control, the central theme of Three to a Loaf will strike a responsive chord in a readership today wrenched once more by polar tensions of security and morality.