Two Irish friends set out to see the world—only to endure the horrors of WWI, in “the best novel of love in the time of war since Cold Mountain” (Howard Frank Mosher, author of A Stranger in the Kingdom).
In 1913, before any rumors of war in Europe, Matthias Wrenn and Con Hatchel—lifelong friends from Ballyrannel in the Irish midlands—decide to see the world at the king’s expense and join the British army.
A year later, while en route to India, their troop ship is recalled and they soon find themselves in the European slaughterhouse that was World War I. As stretcher-bearers, the two men witness all too closely the nightmare of the battlefield and the trenches.
Meanwhile, back home in Ireland, Con’s sister and Matthias’s lover, Kitty Hatchel, yearns for their safe return and reminds them of their carefree childhood, as well as their hopes for the future. But by the war’s end, the future they had all dreamed of is gone, replaced by anger, violence, and open rebellion in Ireland. And what little hope they have left may not be enough to sustain them, in this “a tour de force of writing, passionate, moving, and brilliant” (Kevin Baker, author of The Big Crowd).
