Grapes of Wrath

Written in the midst of the Great War's carnage, this novel captures what it meant to be an ordinary soldier waiting for the whistle that would send you over the top. Boyd Cable places us inside the 5/6 Service Battalion of the Stonewalls, among men like Larry Arundel, Billy Simson, and the Kentucky-born Jefferson Lee, as they march toward the Somme and the thunder of artillery that has become their constant companion. The soldiers trade dark jokes and rumors, their conversations revealing the peculiar camaraderie that forms when young men know they are living on borrowed time. Cable renders the waiting itself as a kind of torture: the alert, the tension, the brotherhood forged in mud and fear. This is not a novel of glory or heroics but of the infantryman's lot - the weight of equipment, the roar of shells, and the strange humor men use to survive the unsurvivable. For readers who want to understand what WWI actually felt like to those in the trenches, this is essential, unflinching testimony from someone who was there.