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History is engagingly brought to life in this novel of a young Frenchman’s experiences leading a ragtag band of soldiers in Napoleon’s Russian folly. As empty victories embolden the French Emperor to chase his foe’s retreating armies across vast stretches of countryside, winter sets in and leads to one of the worst debacles in military history. It is within this momentous chapter of days gone by that the author has chosen to weave a tapestry of romance, danger, and mystery.
Guy De Tournet is a Captain of Cavalry. He is also hungry, tired, and bedraggled. Behind him are sacked villages and supplies too distant to access. Ahead of him is the battle of Borodino. In that conflict, he is felled by a lance and in danger of dying. His second-in-command, Adamski, rescues him and takes him to a Cossack village which is also the home of Mishka, a young woman Guy had previously set free. As she’s nursing him back to life, she falls in love with Guy as Adamski falls in love with her. Soon, a reckoning will come that tests all of them.
Blake is a skilled writer whose plot twists, turns, and has more than one secret waiting to be uncovered near the end. Her prose depicts the horrors and deprivations of war compellingly, while she’s also adept at dramatizing the competing emotions of fear, guilt, and loyalty which are ever present in romantic entanglements. The occasional use of a cliché or a modern idiom in this historic tale sometimes jars, yet her storytelling capabilities enable swift passage over these rare speed bumps. If you like historical fiction that makes huge events imminently human, chances are you’ll enjoy this tale of lives rent asunder in Napoleonic times.