In the Whirl of the Rising

1904. The Second Boer War bleeds across the South African veld, and a group of English soldiers find themselves swallowed by its brutality. Among them is Piers Lamont, a man whose engagement to Violet Courtland hangs by a thread after a moment of hesitation at a wintry gathering cost him his reputation. When he failed to save a drowning boy, the word 'coward' followed him into this foreign war. Now, far from English drawing rooms, he must navigate not only theniper fire and disease-ridden trenches but the harder battle of reclaiming his honor in the eyes of those he loves. Violet herself must reckon with whether she condemned too quickly, or not quickly enough. As the war drags on and the soldiers encounter a sympathetic Dutch farmer and a young woman who becomes an unlikely anchor for one of them, the novel asks what courage truly costs and whether redemption is possible when the world has already rendered its verdict.