The brutality and complexity of World War I is expressed in Lines of Courage, a gripping, elaborately configured account of the "war to end all wars." The lives of five young protagonists from different countries intertwine as they come of age during the terrible years of war.
This expansive novel is divided into five sections for each of the young people it features but, as the war advances, the breathtaking, heartbreaking stories begin to spill over. The novel begins with the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as witnessed by 12-year-old Felix, a Jewish boy from the Austria-Hungary empire, and progresses to the end of the war, almost four-and-a-half years later. Along the way we meet Kara, a British girl who wants to be a Red Cross nurse; Juliette, separated from her family when they are evacuated from their French home; Dimitri, a Russian farm boy sent by his Tsar to the front with no weapon; and Elsa, daughter of a major in the German army. Great Britain, France and Russia are allied against Germany and Austria-Hungary, but these five children are less concerned about hating their enemies than they are with the day-to-day trials of survival.
Jennifer A. Nielsen (A Night Divided; The Traitor's Game series) sensitively conveys both the wretchedness and the hope of an adolescence spent in trenches, caves, prison camps, ambulance trains and even clean, pleasant officer's quarters. It's a lot to take in--but then, so was the Great War. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor