Both of my grandfathers served in WWI. Growing up on their stories, I had a keen interest in WWI. A lover of history, I attended an exhibit at the Smithsonian called The Faces of War that focused on prosthetic masks made by artists during WWI for men whose faces had been mutilated by war. Having always wanted to write a historical novel, I merged my interest in WWI with a newfound passion for these faces of war and wrote Day Lights the Bone (not yet published). The novel is set in a military hospital in Wandsworth, England, during the final months of WWI. I am a professor at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN, where for many years I taught and served as Director of The Creative Writing Programs.
In all three novels Barker does a masterful job depicting the physical and psychological effects of war on human bodies and minds. Real-life Doctor W. H. R. Rivers, a psychiatrist at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland, is a character in all three. Dr. Rivers was a pioneer in studying nerve regeneration and using talk therapy to unlock buried memories and help heal the shattered minds of soldiers suffering severe neurasthenia. Regeneration focuses on Dr. Rivers’ work with soldiers recovering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. In the process the reader is introduced to the range of other therapies also being used at the time, techniques that seem useless and cruel to contemporary eyes. A major character is real-life poet and war hero Siegfried Sassoon, a conscientious objector who has been sent to Craiglockhart to discredit him. Dr. Rivers experiences the painful irony that comes from convincing a man who is ambivalent about warfare to enter combat. In her novel, Barker also explores how society defines and responds to masculinity and homosexuality.
"Calls to mind such early moderns as Hemingway and Fitzgerald...Some of the most powerful antiwar literature in modern English fiction."-The Boston Globe
The first book of the Regeneration Trilogy-a Booker Prize nominee and one of Entertainment Weekly's 100 All-Time Greatest Novels.
In 1917 Siegfried Sasson, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World War I. His reason: the war was a senseless slaughter. He was officially classified "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital. There a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers, set about restoring Sassoon's "sanity" and sending him back…
The Eye in the Door continues Barker’s exploration of the morality of war through its impacts on human beings. While she continues the journeys of Dr. W. H. R. Rivers and Siegried Sassoon, she explores in great detail the experience of Lieutenant Billy Prior, a complex character who works as a domestic intelligence agent. Prior is torn between his own antiwar feelings and his working class and bisexual identities as he spies on pacifists, homosexuals, and government critics.
The second installment in the Regeneration Trilogy
It is the spring of 1918, and Britain is faced with the possibility of defeat by Germany. A beleaguered government and a vengeful public target two groups as scapegoats: pacifists and homosexuals. Many are jailed, others lead dangerous double lives, the "the eye in the door" becomes a symbol of the paranoia that threatens to destroy the very fabric of British society.
Central to this novel are such compelling, richly imagined characters as the brilliant and compassionate Dr. William Rivers; his most famous patient, the poet Siegfried Sassoon; and Lieutenant Billy Prior, who…
Elsie has two feet in the 20th century. Smith has one foot in the 19th. Their marriage, founded on physical attraction, is built on sand as all around them the earth of Europe also starts to quake. Prised apart by emotional conflict and the loss of two children they are…
The culmination of the trilogy, The Ghost Road, continues Barker’s exploration of the morality of war as the war draws to an end. Dr. Rivers’ successful treatment of Billy Prior has resulted in Prior’s return to the front where he prepares to enter the war’s final battles, detailing his experiences in a diary. Rivers’ himself continues to care for patients while revisiting pivotal scenes from his own past.
Set in the closing months of World War I, this towering novel combines poetic intensity with gritty realism as it brings Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy to its stunning conclusion.
In France, millions of men engaged in brutal trench warfare are all "ghosts in the making." In England, psychologist William Rivers, with severe pangs of conscience, treats the mental casualties of the war to make them whole enough to fight again. One of these, Billy Prior, risen to the officer class from the working class, both courageous and sardonic, decides to return to France with…
Testament of Youth is a beautifully written memoir of Brittain’s life between 1914 and 1925, depicting the impact of the war on Brittain, her family, and colleagues. Poised to study literature at Oxford University when war breaks out, Brittain decides instead to volunteer with the Red Cross as a V.A.D. (Voluntary Aid Detachment). The memoir provides a close-up view of her experience working as a nurse in England, Malta, and France. It also explores her acute suffering and disillusionment at the losses of her fiancé, brother, and several close friends. A film version of the memoir made in 2015 is worth seeing, but the memoir itself is the prize.
To Do Justice is the first book in the White Winter Trilogy. The other books are To Love Kindness and To Walk Humbly. The Trilogy follows the same set of characters through eight tumultuous years in their lives and in the history of the world. To Do Justice starts…
The Daughters of Mars provides a unique account of war through the lens of two sisters from New South Wales who serve as nurses on an Australian ship carrying soldiers wounded at the Battle of Gallipoli in Turkey. After the ship is sunk, the sisters end up nursing on the Western Front. The novel is a page-turning, authentic account of the personal and professional experiences of Australian nurses dealing with the horrific impacts of war.
In 1915, two spirited Australian sisters join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their father's dairy farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. Used to tending the sick as they are, nothing could have prepared them for what they confront, first in the Dardanelles, then on the Western Front. Yet they find courage in the face of extreme danger and become the friends they never were before. And eventually they meet the kind of men worth giving up their precious independence for - if only they all survive.
At once epic in scope and extraordinarily intimate,…
In Rainy Lake, author Mary Rockcastle invites the reader to savor the sights, sounds, and smells of summer at her parents' lopsided lakefront cabin during the 1960s. From the landscape of her memory, Danielle Fillian paints a sensitive and wise family portrait of summers filled with fly-fishing, swimming, water-skiing, new friendships, and a deepening first love. But with the intrusion of the Vietnam War and the rumblings of the civil rights movement growing steadily nearer, this sheltered vacation community is forced to acknowledge the harsh realities of the wider world.
This book is a literary historical novel. It is set in Britain immediately after World War II, when people – gay, straight, young, and old - are struggling to get back on track with their lives, including their love lives. Because of the turmoil of the times, the number of…
Set in pre-literate Bronze Age Greece, Serpent Visions reimagines the enigmatic myth of the gender-switching seer Teiresias. Walking in the deep woods, he strikes apart two coupling serpents and transforms into a woman. Seven years later, she, now called Teira, encounters mating serpents, strikes between them, and becomes male again.…
