Charlie Barak — R.J. Parker

Based on actual events, Charlie Barak's story begins in the bucolic Saskatchewan countryside and its Arcadian villages. It is 1943 and war rages in Europe. Charlie, hoping to put his technological skills to use, decides to leave everything he has ever known behind and enlist. It is in Glasgow that Charlie meets and falls in love with the beautiful young nurse, Grace, who is destined to be his bride. And, it's on the deadly fields of Flanders, during the horrific battle for the Scheldt, that the gentle Charlie discovers the dark angels that lie in wait beneath the soft tissue of civility. Late in life following the death of Grace, Charlie befriends and decides to take up residence with Anna, a young woman nearly a third his age. It is a decision that will take him along a path every bit as dark and treacherous as the bomb pitted roads and blackened meadows of Belgium and Holland.