I'm writing a novel for each of the seven years of World War Two. To me, it’s an inexhaustible subject for many reasons, some of which are the moral issues it confronts, its parallels to today’s wars, and the ever-present possibility of dictator-driven genocide. The novels are not connected; their commonality being ordinary people whose lives and destinies are distorted by war. Each takes place in a fictional town, itself a character, and each has an underlying theme: one art, one sport, one music, one food, one science. (The theme of the last, is, appropriately, writing itself.) They’re fast-paced, evocative and historically grounded in the very real events that characterized each year of the global conflict.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Two new novels in series available now

Deauvenoy, 1939 and Valdinato, 1943 are now published and available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple iBooks.

Deauvenoy, 1939 takes place in France.  Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Holland, Belgium and Norway have fallen to the Nazis. In Paris, the government quails before Hitler as France prepares, confusedly, to be next. Two citizens, at least, are determined to not give in — a rich physics undergraduate who works on atomic fission, and her working-class chauffeur who is falling in love with her. Each in their own way fights back, with some touching, some disastrous, results. In stark contrast to France’s predicament at the beginning of the war, interludes follow an American GI on his way to Paris in the wake of the D-Day invasion, almost five years later.

Amazon 

Barnes & Noble

In Valdinato, 1943, the story begins in New York, but since the central character, Ennio, an Italian-American pastry chef, decides he should sign up, the action soon moves to the invasion of Italy. He becomes a cook with a company moving north from Naples, village by village, toward Rome. Meanwhile Lucia is working the family farm in the Liri Valley below the Abbey of Monte Cassino. Ennio and his friends are stopped short by the Germans at their Gustav Line, of which the Abbey forms a crucial part. Lucia’s farm is bombed, and she and Ennio are soon involved personally in one of the worst battles of WWII.

Amazon 

Barnes & Noble

More information, and a sample chapter from each, at www.davidandrewwestwood.com
Plus a free short story.
Posted by David Westwood at 11:03 AM

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)