As World War I sweeps through Europe, Percy and Harry, South Londoners called by duty, enlist in a fighting “Pals Battalion,” finding a friendship that binds their families together on the home front as tightly as their bond sustains them in the trenches, until Percy’s attempt to save his friend’s life in battle reveals an unexpected cost of war.

This is the premise of my World War I era novel entitled The Masks We Wear, which bases its narrative on real-life historical events learned from decades of research, including firsthand accounts, memoirs, and my own explorations of the Western Front.

The plot of this book has been churning inside me for the last forty years, ever since reading Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front as a senior in college. The themes in this book—the profound impact of trench warfare and trauma on soldiers, the sacrifices made by families on the home front, the marshaling of women to work in factories, farms, and transport to support the war effort—resonate today with the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, where neither combatants nor civilians are spared the brutality of industrial warfare. This book is dedicated to their struggle and to the healing of their nation’s wounds.

Lest We Forget.