Ken Jacobie’s wartime assignment was to become his opportunity of a lifetime, but where opportunity inevitably led to reckoning.

This is a riveting fictional novel rooted in WW2 history and subsequent East-West Cold War intrigue and rivalry.

The protagonist is recently married Ken Jacobie, an RAF sergeant with a beautiful but still-young wife, now with an infant son. He is about to be posted to Normandy, France, a week after D-day. Assigned to him are his young commonwealth crew of some 18 young technicians. They are tasked with salvaging downed allied fighter aircraft.

Wars are complex affairs well suited to Jacobie’s leadership skills and complex character. They not only confront soldiers with life and death and unexpected challenging events, but also disrupt life, profoundly affecting the soldiers and their families alike.

Those contrasting human stories of sudden extended separation, emotional vacuum and a life of ‘making do’, both at the home-front and on foreign soil, are often left untold.

In this balancing act Maggie, Ken’s wife, is seen as heroic, both as a good mother and a resourceful provider and in finding her stride in difficult times.

Ken Jacobie, surrounded by wartime devastation and opportunity in foreign lands, becomes preoccupied with both its challenges and its temptations. Thoughts of domestic life become only a distant memory. Opportunity has become the essence of Ken Jacobie’s wartime zeitgeist, leaving loved ones as collateral damage in his wake.