The Four Bells (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781733783507)

A Christmas Toast to the past...

Damaged World War 1 veteran Al Weldy revisits his home town on Christmas Eve 1931, intending to raise a toast to his dead comrade-in-arms, Eddie Beane. Behind the bar of The Four Bells he finds Eddie's sister Maddy, his one-time flame.

Maddy, now a widow, confides how the Great War damaged her husband and draws from a reluctant Al the details of his army service with her brother Eddie. Al's stories reveal how he and Eddie went to war with youthful enthusiasm, but came of age in the tumult and tragedy of battle. He reflects on the Christmas Truce of 1914, when British and German soldiers laid down their weapons for an uplifting encounter on a battlefield gone quiet.

Maddy is delighted when she learns that Eddie found romance in Flanders with Therese, a beautiful Belgian refugee. But, in the end, she must endure the news of Eddie's brave, rebellious death in the trenches.

...and the future?

As Al and Maddy reopen the old wounds the war caused, they find that their youthful romance has transformed into a more mature emotional connection, and possibly a new life together.