Lieutenant Robert Fitzgerald has managed to retain his sanity, his humanity, and his honor during the hell of WWI's trench warfare. Charlotte Braninov fled the shifting storm of the impending Russian Revolution for the less-threatening world of field camp medicine, serving as a nurse in the most hopeless of fronts. Their friendship creates a sanctuary both could cling to in the most desperate of times. Historical fiction about life, loss, and love, By the Hands of Men explores the power that lies within each of us to harm - or to heal - all those we touch.
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I was born in Texas City, TX, the son of a career Air Force meteorologist. Attended a variety of schools at all of the hot spots of the nation, such as Abilene, Texas, and Bellevue, Nebraska. Sent to my grandparent’s house in Tucson, Arizona when things were tough at home. I was pretty damn lost, as my grandparents were largely strangers to me. My older brother, a more taciturn type, refused to discuss what was going on. Fortunately, like so many kids before me, I was rescued by literature. Or, at least, by fiction.
In a tiny used bookstore that was just one block up from a dirt road, I discovered that some good soul had unloaded his entire collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars” series in Ballantine Paperback. Moved by some impulse, I spent my RC Cola money on the first book, “A Princess of Mars.” I think what struck me was how these books were possessed of magic: they were able to transport me far from this dusty land of relatives who I didn’t know and relatives pretended not to know me to another dusty land of adventure, heroism, nobility, and even love. It was the first magic I’d encountered that wasn’t a patent fraud, and when I closed the stiff paperback with the lurid images on the cover, I decided it was the kind of magic I wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to mastering. And, thus, I was saved.
Since then, I’ve never looked back. I’ve written poems, short stories (twice runner-up in the Playboy college fiction contest), plays (winning some regional awards back East and a collegiate Historical Playwriting Award), and screenplays. I’m a member of the WGAw, with one unproduced screenplay sold to Fox Television. Along the way, I’ve done the usual starving artist jobs. Been a janitor, a waiter, a clerk in a bookstore. I was the 61st Aviation Rescue Swimmer in the Coast Guard (all that Tarzan reading wasn’t wasted). I’m also not a bad cook, come to think of it. Currently, I’m a husband, father, and cat-owner. I’m an avid bicyclist and former EMT.
I live in Southern California with my lovely wife. My friends call me “Griff,” my parents call me “Roy,” and my college-age son calls me “Dadman.” It’s a good life. By the Hands of Men, Book Three: “The Wrath of a Righteous Man” will be released in May 2016.
http://bythehandsofmen.com/
My Thoughts
I had a great uncle that fought in WWI and I had heard that this war in particular was terrible, well all wars are hell , but with the trench warfare and the use of nerve gas it was more so. It is said that WWI was the deadliest war in history with over 60 million European military personnel killed from 1914 to 1918 and 7 million permanently disabled and another 15 million seriously injured.
In this Book One of the series, By The Hands of Men the characters Charlotte Braninov and Lieutenant Robert Fitzgerald are the front and center. Charlotte is from Russian aristocracy serving as a nurse in a base hospital in France. Grueling work for sure, attending to the injured and dying in almost primitive conditions while bombing is going on all around the hospital. Robert Fitzgerald comes to the camp hospital gravely injured. Charlotte tends to him among the many and they form a relationship and eventually fall in love.
As we read we become part of the story during the ups and downs of war, horrendously bloody on minute and then rewarding the next. With secondary characters that you grow to love or hate if you will, that keep you wanting more. I loved Charlotte's character as she is a very compassionate and caring nurse, seemingly taking it all in stride. Then there is the old nurse who is a bit of a curmudgeon but has a surprising side to her. The book does end on a bit of a sad note as there is not always a happy ending and I was glad that there are two more in the series, Into the Flames, Book Two and Book Three coming out in May 2016 the story of Charlotte and Robert continues. Definitely a lot of research went into the telling of a war and it's people, even though they were fictional, you almost think that they were real. I really enjoyed it.
I received a copy of this book for my honest thoughts.
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