Guest Reviewer Earl Staggs Reviews: "The Officer's Code" by Lyn Alexander

Please welcome back author Earl Staggs as he reviews The Officer’s Code by Lyn Alexander. Earl just recently released his new novel Justified Action and is back at work crafting a sequel to Memory Of A Murder. Earl will be teaching tomorrow and Saturday at the Northeast Texas Writers’ Organization 27^th annual Spring Conference at the Mount Pleasant Civic Center. Details are here. On Sunday Earl will be in the Lochwood neighborhood of Dallas at LUCKY DOG BOOKS for a book signing with Denise Weeks and Jenny Milchman. The event is scheduled at 1pm and you can read more about it here.

THE OFFICER’S CODE by Lyn Alexander

Reviewed by Earl Staggs

It is Edwardian England in 1912, and eighteen-year-old Eric Foster’s life has been planned out for him by his tyrannical father, a respected lawyer and judge. Eric is expected to graduate at the top of his class at Cambridge and join his father’s law firm. Eric is not sure what he wants to do with his life, but he is certain he does not want to be a lawyer. His grades reflect his lack of interest in his studies, so his father packs him off to a new school in Germany with dire directions to apply himself diligently and achieve the goals dictated for him.

Once in Heidelberg, Eric is an outcast among his peers until he is befriended by Gerdt Von Wittingen, a student his own age from a wealthy German family, and they quickly become best friends and roommates. When Eric visits Gerdt’s family’s mansion in the country, he meets Gerdt’s sister, Brigitte, an exquisitely beautiful girl who is flirtatious, yet seems immature and childlike in many ways. Eric considers her a reckless wildling who enjoys making fools of the many men who pursue her.

Inevitably, Eric and Brigitte fall in love, and their budding romance is written with an engaging hand by the author. When they eventually talk of marriage, major obstacles arise. Eric’s father forbids the marriage and orders his immediate return to England. Brigitte’s parents do not feel Eric has the breeding and background necessary to join a family of their high societal status. Eric’s solution to these problems is radical, drastic, and surprising, but he succeeds in making the marriage possible.

The newlyweds face another major obstacle immediately when World War One erupts in Europe. Now an officer in the German Imperial Cavalry though barely out of his teens, Eric must lead his troop into battle against the Russian Army. At home, Brigitte volunteers at the hospital to assist with the wounded and sees the suffering and atrocities of war for herself. These two young people become different adults during the period of the war, and must face that fact if and when they are able to continue their marriage.

Reading the horrendous details of the war made me wonder if the author had been there when it happened. That’s impossible, of course, so she must have researched it thoroughly. Her descriptions of the fighting and the effects of the war on the people involved will make you think you are there, too. That’s how good her writing is.

I highly recommend this book. The author deftly writes of a lovely romance and a horrific war as she chronicles the lives of two young people wearily suffering through it not by choice but for the sake of their marriage, their honor, their homeland and, for Eric, adherence to his Officer’s Code.

THE OFFICER’S CODE

Trade Paperback  from Storyteller Publishing
October 23, 2012
Available at Amazon Canada, Amazon US , B&N

Get to know Lyn Alexander and read Chapter 1 at: http://www.lynalexander.com

Earl Staggs ©2013

"The Day I Almost Became a Great Writer"

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