Book Blurb:
In 1944, Sinner's Cross was just a point on a map: a muddy track through shell-torn German woods. Worthless...except to the brass on both sides of the war, who are willing to sacrifice their best men to have it. Men like Halleck, a tough-as-nails Texan who traded driving cattle for driving soldiers; Breese, a phenomenal actor who can play any part but hero; and Zenger, the Nazi paratrooper who discovers Hitler's Germany is a lousy place to grow a conscience. Their lives and deaths will intersect at the place called Sinner's Cross.
Book Buy Link: https://geni.us/1zcdMnZ
Author Bio:
Miles Watson is one of the most successful independent writers of his generation. He holds undergraduate degrees in Criminal Justice and History and a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction, and served in law enforcement for nearly ten years before moving to Los Angeles, where he has worked on over 200 episodes of television and half a dozen feature films. But his first and last passion is writing. His various works have won the following:
CAGE LIFE - Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book Runner Up (2016): Zealot Script Magazine "Book of the Year" (2017); Best Indie Book Award - Mystery & Suspense (2018)
KNUCKLE DOWN - Writer's Digest S.P.B.A. Honorable Mention (2019); Best Indie Book Award - Suspense (2019)
DEVILS YOU KNOW - Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing Finalist (2019)
THE NUMBERS GAME - Pinnacle Book Achievement Award - Novella - (2019)
NOSFERATU - Pinnacle Book Achievement Award - Novella - (2020)
SINNER'S CROSS - Best Indie Book Award - Historical Fiction - (2019); Book Excellence Award - Action (2020); Literary Titan Book Award - Gold Medal (2020); Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards - Finalist (2020); Readers Favorite Five Stars (2021); Reader's Favorite Gold Medal (2021)
THE VERY DEAD OF WINTER - Literary Titan Book Award - Gold Medal (2022); Pinnacle Book Achievement Award (2022); Book Excellence Award Finalist (2023)
Editorial Review:
In the Author’s Note, Miles Watson states,
“This is a story about human beings, not technology, places or dates.”
It is true.
The text comprises three main parts plus an Epilogue, with each part describing the experience of battle from a different character’s focalised perspective. Watson’s writing is honey smooth, gliding over characters and descriptions with deftness, bringing to the fore a slightly different narrative voice for each of the three main characters. The characters consist of two Americans and one German, all of them caught up in a horror they know is both futile and brutal. This narrative does not glorify war, nor does it glorify warriors. Rather, it shows them as ordinary human beings caught up in a maelstrom not of their making, and over which they have no control.
Part One introduces Sergeant Halleck, a laconic Texan cowboy. The author carefully reveals his nature through both description and flashback:
“Halleck came from people who regarded a slight change of facial expression as adequate to convey the pain of a severed limb.”
“Some prairie wolves had gotten among the cattle, scattering them into the darkness, and amid a ringing chorus of blasphemies the cowboys had leaped into their saddles and tried to round them up by a sliver of moonlight. Sunrise found Halleck alone and empty-headed with exhaustion, trying to get eighteen frightened, bellowing longhorns across a waist-deep river and up the long steepangled bank. All of them had made it except the sole calf, whose hooves scrabbled hopelessly against the crumbling rust-colored mud as it called for its mother. He knew he should leave it for the buzzards. There was no time to lose and no reason to risk seventeen head for one measly calf. If he didn’t rejoin the herd before it started north, he’d most likely never catch up. Furthermore, he’d probably break his horse’s legs or possibly his own neck playing half-ass hero. It made no sense. It made less than no sense. Halleck was still reflecting on the senseless of it when he wheeled his mare and spurred her screaming down the bank.”
Watson reveals Halleck and then, when you know him and care for him, pitches him into a battle so vivid and visceral, you can feel the pressure waves from the explosions and smell the blood and spilled guts:
“Rage detonated in Halleck’s heart, a great bomb whose shockwave carried itself on his blood into his legs and had them moving, into his hands, which brought the Tommy gun up, into his fingers so that it convulsed on the trigger and sent death spraying out ahead of him in wild, uncontrolled bursts as he ran.”
The minor characters, like the main characters in each part, come fully alive and are as intensely defined:
“Certo, a small seal sleek Puerto Rican with eyes as dark as bubbles of tar, fitted a fresh clip into his rifle.”
They all add to the humanity of the narrative, engaging the reader, making you care deeply about what happens to each of them.
Watson pulls off this feat of engagement twice more. In part two, we meet Lieutenant Breese. A city boy, quick witted, capable of humour even when immersed in horrors.
“But in the rear they’re saying the Krauts are finished, that the war’ll be over by Christmas.”
“Never believe anything that comes out of a man’s rear.”
In part three, Major Martin Zenger, aka Zengy, comes to life. Disillusioned, distraught, trying to care for his ‘children,’ to see them through safely. He dodges not only American bullets but the machinations of the ideological wing of the Nazi Party. He comes to their attention after sending in a report which suggests they should retreat, they cannot prevail. This, however, does not fit with the Fuhrer’s belief that all is required for victory is a belief in victory. It is crafted with the same empathy and attention to character detail seen in the previously two parts. Despite Zengy being German, the reader is encouraged to connect with his character as much as with the two Americans.
“The first shells were already slamming into the hillside above them, filling the air with whirling debris and shaking the ground beneath their feet. Zengy could feel the pressure wave roaring over him, staggering his legs, robbing the air from his lungs, knocking blood out of his nose like an invisible fist. But he knew that to fall meant instant death, and so he kept moving, knocked almost double, scrabbling and scrambling and half-deaf, until the noises of bombardment began to fade.”
As stated previously, Watson states this is a story about human beings, not technology, places, or dates, however his attention to detail on matters of weaponry, transport, uniform etc., build for the reader a picture of time and place which completely suspends disbelief. It transports you into the era, the minor details bringing the period to life, living the horror and futility of war through the perspectives of each of the principal characters.
*****
“Sinner's Cross” by Miles Watson receives five stars and the “Highly Recommended” award of excellence from The Historical Fiction Company
Award:
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