CHILDREN OF THE WILD

Two Virginians form a profound friendship that must survive the Great War.

In 1917, Roy Young is a cocky Vanderbilt student who takes for granted his future marriage to childhood friend Samantha Hatton. Although she cares for him, she says, “I don’t belong to you, Roy.” Walking up into the highlands, she seeks out a reported “wild boy” who doesn’t know his own name but wears a blue greatcoat with the name “Ennis Duke” stitched inside. He doesn’t remember his family but guesses they may have been lost in a flood; now he lives alone on the mountain. Their mutual attraction is immediate, physical, and powerful, and Sam brings Ennis down to the valley to meet her welcoming family. Home from Vanderbilt, Roy has a fistfight with his new rival, because they were “the kind of boys for whom violence was a native tongue.” But soon they become great friends, and when the U.S. enters the war in Europe, “Master Roy is off to fight the Hun,” and Ennis enlists to fight alongside him. Roy tells his furious father that he’s fighting for honor, but Father says Roy will die for nothing. Roy becomes an officer and Ennis a private, and they fight the enemy in France in gut-wrenching scenes of battle and bloodshed. The two men will risk anything to protect each other, and they are fearsome killers. Meanwhile, the flu comes calling in America and scourges Sam’s Virginia valley. If Roy and Ennis survive, their home will never be the same, and neither will they. The author, himself a Virginian and a combat veteran, skillfully weaves threads of love, friendship, and senseless death into a compelling and often emotional tale where the price of love is paid with sorrow. “Tell somebody that you’ll love them until you die then make it true,” a character says. “Tell them that after you die you will love them still.”

A deeply affecting novel.