Crossroads of Empire by Michael J. Cooper brings readers back into sixteen-year-old Evan Sinclair’s journey through the battlefields of WWI. The adventures and the war itself pick up right where the award-winning Wages of Empire left off.
As in the first book, Evan begins his part of this story by going missing, this time not just from his father’s perspective, but from his own. Severely injured during his service with the Flemish resistance, Evan is discharged from a French field hospital. He’s on his way back to England by hospital ship when it is sunk by a German U-boat. When he reaches British shores as the sole survivor in a lifeboat, he’s left with amnesia and has no memory of who he is.
Evan’s search for his own identity leads him to Rosslyn Castle, the Sinclair family’s ancestral home in Scotland. There he unravels secret family histories and connections long buried. Finally, with assistance from a wise woman, Evan regains his memory. Without the protection the amnesia provided, he faces a host of painful and traumatic memories.
Crossroads of Empire brings to life a journey of self-discovery set against a backdrop of the war in motion. The horrific trench warfare along the Western Front, the disastrous defeat of the Entente at Gallipoli, and the British route of the Turks at the Suez Canal are made real and vivid to the reader.
Likewise, Evan’s journey takes place while the imperial powers jockey for position at the crossroads of empire in the Middle East as the Ottoman Empire, the ‘sick man of Europe,’ teeters on the brink of dissolution. The British, seeking to expand their colonial empire, feed the flames of Arab independence through T.E. Lawrence’s missions to the Bedouin tribes and to the man who would be king of an independent Arab State, Faisal son of Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca.
Cooper’s skillful storytelling sets an unrelenting pace with the international events of the early twentieth century coupled with Evan’s search for answers—about himself and his family’s history.
Back in England, biochemist and Zionist Chaim Weizmann gives his expertise in the production of key munitions components to the British government in the hope of leveraging his critical contribution to the war effort for the promise of Britain’s backing of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
And all the while, Kaiser Wilhelm II looms over the conflict, hoping to sweep in and take the prize he’s always coveted – as have so many others over the centuries – Jerusalem.
Cooper deftly lays out separate strands of memorable historical and fictional characters across the globe – from Kaiser Wilhelm to a Red Cross volunteer – to bring this chapter of history to life. He elegantly intertwines the multiple strands he has created, making for a read that is both a gripping page turner and a series of carefully observed character studies.
Two parallel and equally compelling tracks make Crossroads of Empire impossible to put down. First, Evan’s story, which gives readers a young hero they can root for, and then an insightful and multi-dimensional perspective on a dramatic historical struggle now a century in the past, though one that still reverberates in the present.
The war is thus seen through a kaleidoscope of perspectives beginning with Evan’s father Clive Sinclair at work in London’s War Office, and also includes a fascinating array of people and places which allows the reader to fully experience the war through immediate first-hand experiences. These figures, marvelously brought to life, range from Gertrude Bell and T.E. Lawrence to a proto-Nazi Guido von List in the service of the kaiser, to the future King Faisal of Iraq and the future first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann.
As Evan recovers in Rosslyn Castle unravelling long-hidden family mysteries, the war rages on—from the killing fields of the Western Front, to the debacle of Gallipoli, to Lawrence’s mad race across the Sinai to warn Cairo of an Ottoman attack on the Suez Canal. Throughout, Crossroads of Empire races through its world at a breathless pace that will leave readers gasping for more.
Beautifully written in a voice and in details that capture the era, Crossroads of Empire is a must-read for readers of all ages with high hopes for more of Evan’s adventures yet to come.
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