Introduction

Mireilles finds her world rocked when the Great War comes crashing into the idyllic home she has always known, taking much from her. When Platoon Sergeant Matthew Petticrew discovers her in the Forest of Argonne, three things are clear: she is alone in the world, she cannot stay, and he and his two companions might be the only ones who can get her to safety.

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Excerpt

Prologue

October 24, 1921

Chalons-sur-Marne, France

Ceremony for the Choosing of the Unknown Soldier

There are days you live over and over again, for as long as you live. October twenty-fourth of 1918, just days before the unending war ended, was one of mine. I went into a forest of darkness that day, never imagining how that place would claim me. Four years ago, to the day.

And four caskets before me now.

There were four of us, then, who took a journey. Armed with bayonets and canteens and a mission we had no idea how to accomplish, bumbling fools that we were. A mission of greater import than we realized at the time. One that would change us all.

I watched now from the outskirts of the solemn ceremony as a man in uniform gripped not a bayonet, but a bouquet. A grip of roses—white. Pure. Absent of the scarlet we’d all seen too much of. Slowly, he walked down the line of boxes that held the remnants of so much life. Nobody knew whom the boxes held. And yet everybody knew a thousand soldiers, brothers, friends whom they might hold.

We were no different. I stood shoulder to shoulder with two of my brothers from that time. We’d seen it all, then. We’d seen each other at our best and our worst. We’d scorned one another and needed one another and had left that battle-gouged land with battle-gouged hearts. We’d left one of us behind, in that forest, and though we would never know who lay in these caskets, every one of us wondered: Is it him?

The man before us now would walk this line. He would place that spray of roses on a single casket. The casket would be taken back across the sea, to our nation’s capital, to the soldier’s homeland, to be entombed there. Guarded, always. Kept safe from war, from loss, from all the atrocities he had faced. And in this . . . he would bring something to a nation. Something we brought out of the forest that day, a lifetime ago.

Hope.

This is our tale.

May we never forget.

1

Matthew Petticrew

1900

Greenfield, New York

Rules:

1) Keep off the racetrack, you dolt! That’s what Mr. MacMannus says. He says if Maplehurst Stables is the crowned jewel of thoroughbred racing, then “that dirt you think you can just run on any old time is good as gold.”

2) Feed the hens and horses between the hours of four and five, and if you finish early, stay out and play. Do not come back to the caretaker’s quarters before that. And don’t run on that gold dirt.

I looked at my old notebook, with these two rules scratched inside. I was five—almost six—and I had written them down with the help of Mr. Haggerty, the gardener, so I wouldn’t forget. When I forgot, bad things happened. He’d looked at me a little funny when I told him what they were, but he wrote down the hard words for me before getting back to pruning his roses.

The rules weren’t so bad. The rest of the green rolling hills of Greenfield Springs, New York, were mine for the taking, and most of the racetrack, too. But tonight—tonight there was one more rule.

“Stay with Mrs. Bluet tonight,” Mother had said. “You know the way?” She’d smiled and winced at the same time, cradling her swollen belly before reaching out to ruffle my hair. I was not the smartest boy around, but I could tell something was different. Her breath came quick or sometimes not at all, like she’d been the one caught running around the racetrack and not me.

Her hand was stiffer than usual, and her smile so tight. It wasn’t right. Her smile always went deep and wide, probably the deepest, widest thing I knew.

So, I packed a clean shirt like she told me to right after she’d kissed me on the top of my head. But I tucked myself under her window outside instead of heading to the cook’s quarters at Mr. MacMannus’s house. It sat just on top of the hill, looking down on our little house, the way hawks look down at field mice. I didn’t like it there. It was called Maplehurst too, just like the stables. It sounded sweet like the syrup, but for all its fancy rooms and people coming and going in suits and dresses, it felt awful cold and un-sweet to me. I accidentally called it Maplehurts once when I was there eating a molasses cookie in the kitchen. Mrs. Bluet looked at me with flour on her face and her eyebrows raised and said, “Well, young Matthew, if that isn’t about the rightest thing I ever heard.”

I did not wish to go to there that night. I didn’t want to be near Mr. MacMannus and his rules and the big, cold house. I didn’t want to be away from my mother. She needed me. I could tell.

Only once did I peek inside the window, where an oil lamp glowed so dim I could barely see her there on the bed. Her face was so pinched up that it hurt me to look at her, and her cheeks were wet with tears.

That was the night I first felt the Flame. I called it “the Flame,” for it burned in my chest, right where Mrs. Bluet said my heart was. I once saw them set off dynamite at the quarry over the hills. The way the spark chased a cord to the place it would explode—that’s how I felt. A spark hot within me, a cord running between me and Mother, but I was not allowed in, not allowed to let that spark rush in and explode inside the little house and chase her pain away.

Two ladies came and spoke together so quietly I couldn’t hear. Mother always said that hearing was my gift because I could hear things others couldn’t. Even so, strain as I might, I couldn’t make out what their concerned tones were saying. One woman kept coming and going, bringing cloths and boiling water, while the other one stayed with Mother and said things to her and held her hand while her cries turned into the sort of moan that could dig into your insides and hollow you out. What was wrong?

The groans grew louder and longer until the spark inside of me was gone, smothered by a blanket of fear so heavy I didn’t know whether to run or stay.

So, I prayed. We always prayed on Sundays. Mother would tuck her white blanket around my shoulders and read scriptures to me at our table beneath the very window I now crouched under. She baked something very special on those days, like an apple cake just my size, which she gave completely to me, or vinegar pie, which we shared. I felt like a king on Sundays, wrapped up in that blanket like those red capes that kings wear, only mine was so old and had been washed so many times, it was much softer than any king’s.

But for the rest of the week, she was quiet and troubled most evenings, her only prayers silent, and mine, too.

That night was a Tuesday. I prayed aloud on a Tuesday for the first and only time I could remember, that night. The shortest prayer—it did not rhyme or sound very right, but it was the truest prayer I had ever prayed.

“God in heaven, help her.” I pressed my eyes shut so tight it must have sent my prayer higher, louder. It had to. I rocked myself back and forth to the words and said it again. And again, and again, and again, my words mingling with her cries until her cries grew quiet and were replaced by another, smaller cry. That of a baby.

Something strange happened, then. I have never felt it since that moment and maybe never will again. But as I rose to my knees and clutched the windowsill, my fingernails caked with dirt, and peeked inside that golden-glow room, I saw something perfect.

Mother, happy. A baby in her arms, all wrapped up in the old king’s cape blanket and her smile once again so deep and wide.

That was the last time I saw her. I did go up to Maplehurst after that, and when the morning came, I awoke to Mrs. Bluet sitting beside me and holding my hand. She looked like the whole world had cracked open overnight. And when she spoke, I found that it had.

Mother was gone. She had died in the night, gone to the angels and God above. Leaving behind one tiny angel in her place, and both of us without a mother or a home. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. The story is told from five different viewpoints: Matthew’s, Mira’s, Jasper’s, George’s, and Henry’s. Which of their personalities or perspectives did you most connect with, and why?

2. Nature plays a bit of a character in this book: stray birdsong in the forest when there had been none at the front, a symphony of crickets outside the window at Aline’s bakery, and the glow worms/fireflies. Did you feel these elements added anything to the scenes, story, or undercurrents?

3. The morning Aline welcomes the soldiers into her bakery, “growling stomachs and the miracle of steaming pastries . . . bridged any language obstacle.” Have you ever experienced a time when food helped ease tension, build a bridge, or offer a chance for connection that would have been difficult to come by otherwise?

4. Jasper Truett has a complex history in the role of “father.” Thinking of his relationships with Amelia, Matthew, and Mira, how does his journey as a father play out in unexpected ways?

5. Chester gives Matthew an empty artillery shell he pulled from the battlefield, and it is “as hollow as could be.” In the end, the shell has been turned into something that holds light. Can you think of other things in the story that follow a similar transformation from battlefield to light?

6. After the zeppelin incident, Henry describes George’s discovery that he was “apparently, astoundingly, made for just such a situation. . . . What if what we believe to be our shortcomings, our oddities, are actually purposeful quirks that suit us for the moments we were made for?” Have you ever experienced a time like this or observed it in others?

7. Throughout the story, Henry/Hank struggles to find his voice. You may have even noticed the progression of his bylines in his articles, which changed throughout the story. How do you feel his voice changed along the way, and how does this reflect him as a character? How would the story have been different without Henry?

8. Mira promises to keep the lantern lit in the woods to bring her father home. Instead, it brings Matthew, and in doing so, leads to the rest of the matches being spent. And yet Matthew helps her return to the woods and eventually see that promise kept and fulfilled, despite it appearing physically impossible. Have you ever encountered a situation where all reasonable hope seemed gone, only to witness that hope come about in an unlikely way?


9. Those who lived in the year of 1918—the year of a world war, a pandemic, and an uncertain economy—lived in “unprecedented times.” Every day, they were witnessing difficult things they never could have anticipated the scope of. (Sound familiar?) And yet they also lived to witness extraordinary kindness and redemption. We, too, are living in what many like to call “unprecedented times.” What good have you seen during or following our recent trials? What good do you imagine might happen in the years to come?

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