Smoke

by L. Carey Rowland

The year 1937 was a perilous one, but not yet as explosive as the terrible forces of displacement and war that would soon overtake Europe and the whole world. Through the eyes of a young American, Philip Morrow, we sojourn through an Old World that is slowly overheating with new friction. Nazi militarism seethes clandestinely across the Rhine, cranking its vindictive wehrmacht machine, soon to sideswipe French bewilderment, and obliterate the peace and safety of the whole, unsuspecting world. Through the slow smoke of that pivotal year 1937, we catch glimpses of a few scattered, disruptive sparks, soon to ignite a worldwide blaze. In London, Philip is doing business, representing an American tobacco company. He's a curious, ambitious young man who has forsaken the new world--his mercantile beginnings in a small mountain town, his university education--to embark on a roundabout odyssey in the Old World. The path Philip chooses, or that has chosen him, compels the young American along a trail of discovery. It becomes a sojourn in which he begins to understand how and why his father had a fateful appointment with eternity on a Belgian battleground in 1918. In a Europe still weary from the last War, Philip gets his first real history lesson--not the kind of lesson you receive in school, but the kind you get when the torrents of history, and a current of love, get a hold of you.

310 pages, Paperback

First published March 21, 2014