Reluctant Odyssey

In this second book of her war trilogy, Edith Pargeter reveals a side of WWII that is rarely covered and mostly forgotten, the infantry campaigns in North Africa and Southeast Asia. A young enlisted man from the English Midlands who barely survived Dunkirk finds himself fighting amidst the beauty and isolation of the desert in North Africa and then in the tropical hell that was the Southeast Asia campaign. He learns to challenge his own simple-hearted patriotism, the provincialism and racism of his own nation, as well as conventional notions of bravery and comeraderie. Fans of the Cadfael tales, written by Pargeter as Ellis Peters, will scarecely recognize the blunt, almost journalistic realism of this novel, but the story teller is as magnificent as ever. The characters are vivid and passionate, the wartime environments brutal and compelling.