Splendor from Darkness

When Allied Forces were engaging Rommel in North Africa during World War Two, as usual the frontline troops had the heaviest casualties. So when Act. Sgt. Michael Santini is successful in almost single-handedly guiding his depleted and miss-matched international Special Forces squad through a rear-guard defense of a temporary retreat in the Kasserine Pass, while personally surviving hand-to-hand combat and a violent tank attack, he counts himself lucky when he’s only wounded. He’s already found that not all of his battles are against the Germans, but in a rear-echelon hospital where he imagined he was safe, the fight for his life intensifies. Falsely charged with rape, a wartime offense punishable by death, his existence suddenly depends upon the outcome of a wildly psychological Courts-Martial. Later thrown together in an espionage mission in Southern France with the conniving nurse that tried to eliminate him, New York taxi driver Santini finds that destiny has plans for him different than he had ever imagined. Beautifully conceived and masterfully written, Splendor from Darkness was basically done between 1945 and 1960 and then refined over the next 50 years during constant family conflict. Davey’s mother, then remarried, used her International Harvester fortunes to suppress Splendor and other manuscripts, paying publishers to keep them out of print. This publication is a testament to William Davey’s perseverance against a lifetime of unjustified malicious destructiveness.