Shoulder the Sky (World War I Series, Novel 2)
A moving novel of life during the dark days of war
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- € 1,99
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- € 1,99
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It is the spring of 1915, but deep in the trenches, there is no summer in sight...
Shoulder the Sky is the second novel in Anne Perry's insightful and harrowing quintet charting the English experience of the First World War. Perfect for fans of Pat Barker and Sebastian Barry.
'The plot of this book is riveting throughout; the elegance of the prose and depth of characterisation combine to create a powerful and poignant journey into the past that long stays with you after the final page' - The Lady
By April of 1915, as chaplain Joseph Reavley tends to the soldiers in his care, the nightmare of trench warfare is impartially cutting down England's youth. On one of his rescue forays into no-man's-land, Joseph finds the body of an arrogant war correspondent, Eldon Prentice. A nephew of the respected General Owen Cullingford, Prentice was despised for his prying attempts to elicit facts that would turn public opinion against the war. Most troublesome to Joseph, Prentice has been killed not by German fire but, apparently, by one of his own compatriots. What Englishman hated Prentice enough to kill him? Joseph is afraid he may know, and his sister, Judith, who is General Cullingford's driver and translator, harbours her own fearful suspicions.
Meanwhile, Joseph and Judith's brother, Matthew, an intelligence officer in London, continues his quiet search for the sinister figure they call the Peacemaker, who, like Eldon Prentice, is trying to undermine the public support for the struggle-and, as the Reavley family has good reason to believe, is in fact at the heart of a fantastic plot to reshape the entire world. An intimate of kings, the Peacemaker kills with impunity, and his dark shadow stretches from the peaceful country lanes of Cambridgeshire to the twin hells of Ypres and Gallipoli.
What readers are saying about Shoulder the Sky:
'She makes the horror and futility nightmarishly real but not a cliché'
'I feel immersed in the world she is creating'
'A real page-turner with strong literary merit'
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this excellent sequel to 2003's No Graves As Yet, bestseller Perry continues the exploits of the Reavley children, who lost their parents in a devastating car crash that proved to be no accident on the eve of WWI. The implications of that double homicide continue to dog Joseph, a military chaplain in the thick of trench warfare at Ypres; his sister, Judith, a volunteer driver/translator for the general in command of that front; and their brother, Matthew, an intelligence officer. While justice of a sort was meted out to the man directly responsible for the murder of their parents, the Reavleys believe a master manipulator and traitor they have dubbed the "Peacemaker," who seeks a radical alliance between king and kaiser to end the bloodshed, was the prime mover. When Joseph finds the corpse of an arrogant, bullying journalist in no-man's land, he soon realizes that a British hand was responsible, and that even in the midst of war's savagery, his conscience demands that he seek out the truth. This classic puzzle is nicely paralleled by Matthew's dogged search for the Peacemaker's identity. Perry cleverly resolves some plot lines while reserving the solution of others for future mysteries. Though her depiction of the ravages of war is not at the level of a Charles Todd, she does a superb job of bringing the grimness and waste to life, in a nice shift of gears from her two 19th-century historical series.
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