A Salient in Flanders - Softcover

Thrush, Alan R.M.

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798357231253

Publisher: Independently published, 2022

Synopsis

ABSORBING HISTORICAL FICTION. PERFECT CHOICE FOR READERS WHO ENJOYED 'BIRDSONG'.

Day by day, the casualties mount …
To the literature of the Great War battlefields is added an unforgettable journey back in time: the story of the struggle for a single French village, a meticulously researched snapshot of the Western Front of April 1918. Written in a style as ruthlessly relentless as the fighting it portrays, the narrative hurls the reader directly into the eye of the storm that was Germany’s biggest-ever offensive of that war, Operation Michael, imprinting the assault vividly and indelibly upon the mind. With the British Army retreating across a ninety mile front, one point still holds firm: the village of Foncquevillers, where a single British regiment refuses to yield to a German attack by three, drawing some fifteen thousand ordinary young men into a climactic struggle for possession of a few kilometres of trench and barbed wire, the key to the outcome of the greater battle. For four days, the bloody fighting consumes all.

A Salient in Flanders is the story of this battle. On the British side, the men remain unbowed. On the German side, veterans of the campaign in Russia are thrown into repeated assault to overcome them and take their position. Here, around Foncquevillers, replacements drafted into the armies of both sides will fight their first battle alongside old sweats fighting yet one more. For many, the engagement will be their last. Yet even as all dream of home and sweethearts, the colossal German offensive gathers momentum to become an all-consuming juggernaut that brings the two sides into deadly collision within the cauldron of the trenches. None can avoid its rage and flame. As the German attack unleashes its awful power, all are thrown into a furnace of intense bombardment, frontal assault, desperate defence and brutal counter-attack. The struggle assumes an unforeseen intensity. Will any survive to taste victory?

Independent reader acclaim for A Salient in Flanders:

“Epic. The most subsuming, believable account of life in the trenches that I’ve ever encountered.”
“Tender and bittersweet, with a twist at the close that caught me unawares.”
“A devastating portrayal of war’s waste and cost, unique in its descriptions of the humanity of the individual and the frailty of the human psyche in the face of battle.”
“Real and grounded.”

To read this story, click below the book cover: Read Sample

Genres: World War 1 historical fiction; British literary fiction; war fiction.

About this title

About the Author

Would-be philosopher, avid reader and writer, Alan soldiered for seven years before turning his hand to marketing and writing. He has consulted to companies behind some of the world's leading industrial brands.

His first book, Of Land and Spirits, achieved widespread recognition as the defining novel of the Southern African bush war and continues to be extensively read 25 years on. A follow-up work, A Cross for Two Graves, introduced new and very different characters to pick up the thread.

A Salient in Flanders, his third novel, has been tipped as a future classic of the First World War. Its standalone sequel, Winterman's Letter, has just been published.

Alan lives in the port city of Alicante, Spain.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798357231253
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 235