Shoulder the Sky, by Anne Perry
The Book
The Reavley siblings are back and in the thick of World War II. Rev. Joseph Reavley is stationed in Ypres, West Flanders, Belgium. It's spring of 1915, just after the advent of chlorine gas attacks, and well into the trenches. Ypres (Ieper in Dutch), is the front line of the Western Front, where the Germans have been stopped. At stack, the territorial integrity of Belgium and the freedom of the French. Joseph helps evacuate an injured man, a sapper by the name of Corliss. A sapper's job is to dig and mine the tunnels under no man's land, the area between the forward most English trenches and the forward most German trenches. Crossing no man's land is an impossible task under these conditions. The spring is still new, and the nights are still bitterly cold. It rains more than it's sunny, the trenches are loud, crowded, and short on supplies. Rats, lice and ticks crawl over the dirty men. Everyday men are lost to dysentery, frost bite, and diseases like pneumonia in addition to the wounds of war. Joseph accompanies Corliss back to the first aid station, where the nurses and a surgeon try to save what is left of Corliss's hand. But a reporter by the name of Prentice is there, and he's learned that sometimes men injure themselves when their nerves snap. He knows the type of mostly non-lethal injuries like Corliss sustained are done deliberately by men who want to go home, no matter the cost. Prentice makes the allegation known, angering a number of men in the division where Corliss served.
When a fight breaks out between Prentice and an American ambulance driver with a bad temper, Prentice retreats to general's headquarters to report it. He's overly confident General Owen Cullingford, who is also his uncle, will discipline the men who have injured him. But his uncle refuses, knowing Prentice likely provoked the fight and he can't get any evidence as the men have closed ranks, and refuse to acknowledge they saw anything. Disappointed, Prentice then surmises his uncle, a married man, has a crush on his driver, Judith Reavley. His uses this knowledge to blackmail his uncle to allow him onto the front lines. Everyone goes back to the war.
One night, a couple of weeks later, during a brutal assault, Joseph find Prentice dead, murdered on the battlefield. Joseph returns the body, and buries him. He then goes to find General Cullingford to report the death in person, a grace he affords the general to look him in the eye, rather than inform him by mail. Cullingford appreciates the gesture. While there, Joseph confides to Judith that Prentice was murdered. Judith then agrees to go home to England to visit Prentice's mother on Cullingford's behalf.
Meanwhile back in England, Matthew is still looking for the Peacemaker, the man who had the Reavleys' parents murdered. When Judith and Matthew compare notes, they realize, Prentice is likely a part of the pacifist movement which is looking to undermine England's goals. Judith, through a bit of luck realizes that the man who murdered their parents, and Prentice's likely contact are the same woman. When she returns to Belgium she confides in Cullingford, who then suspects the he knows the identity of the Peacemaker. Cullingford returns to England and is murdered when he goes to Matthew in order to have the Peacemaker arrested.
Joseph, in the trenches, finally figures out who murdered Prentice, but before he can bring the man to justice, he has to go home. While there, the Lusitania sinks, derailing Matthew from his task of finding the Peacemaker. He sends Joseph to Gallipoli to investigate one of the suspects. Joseph goes and finds yet another journalist, hell bent on the same task as Prentice, showing the ugliest side of the war so the people at home revolt. He misdirects Joseph, now Joseph must chase after him and return home in time to go back to Ypres or face a court martial. But with the German U-boats all of the place, will either Joseph or the reporter even make it back to England alive. And without Joseph's information will Matthew ever be able to stop the Peacemaker?
My Thoughts
Anne Perry has a knack for historical fiction. The granular details combined with deeply emotional scenes with stakes has a way of making the past come alive. I could almost smell the dirty trenches of WWI while reading this book. It's enough to motivate me to do whatever it takes to make sure our world does not return to this type of fighting. It's the gross destruction of this war that that's so appalling, and Perry, though writing from an English standpoint, makes that abundantly clear.
I still have problems with the overarching story, the chase for the Peacemaker. Although, in world, this chase makes sense, I think a historian might agree with the Peacemaker's assessment of the situation. Certainly there are many people who would have been better off had the Peacemaker succeeded. There would have been no Russian revolution, and the millions who would die as a result. Stopping the war at this stage, would have prevented the holocaust. Certainly, the war should have just stopped at this point, and Austria-Hungary would have been in a very different situation. There, perhaps, might have been nothing that could have prevented the Great Depression, but there are still millions of lives to be lost in this war and millions will lose them in the war to come.
That is not to say I think the Peacemaker to be a moral man (and I'm certain he is a man). I think he doesn't care how many people he kills in the name of peace. And in that way, he is just a callous as those men who led their countries to war. And that's maybe the problem with humanity, we get so caught up in our political goals that we forget there are humans on the other side of equation.
However, the story is compelling and I'm rooting for the Reavleys, who I know to be on the right side of history, however much I wish the Peacemaker's goals had been accomplished.
How Much My Library Card Saved Me
This book came to me from Glenview Public Library. This first edition hardcover entered their collection on October 15, 2004 (a few days after publication). It was classified as part of their core collection in August of 2010 and reaffirmed in October of 2015, or at least that's how I interpret their pencil markings on the title page. As with many hardcovers over 20 years old, the glue along the spine is weakening, causing the book to tilt. Aside from this, the book is in excellent condition. I hope I am not the last person to ready this book. The cover says the book cost $25.95 when it was released, that's the number I will use.
This Book $25.95
Library Items Reviewed This Year $51.95
Private Books
This Book $00.00
Total of Private Books $52.75
Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $107.70
Still Here?
Comments