Blog: awalkingdelight
Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“The Winter Soldier” A Novel
By: Daniel Mason
Narrated by: Laurence Dobiesz
Daniel Mason (Author, physician, winner of 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize.)
Daniel Mason’s “The Winter Soldier” is a reminder of WWI and the heartbreak of war. It is a love story created out of the horror of injuries, desperation of commanders for recruits, and the collateral damage of civilians. All of this is a reminder of what is happening today in Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, and Russia. Told from the losing side of war, it makes one think of WWI’s history and the aftermath of today’s military actions.
The well-known triggering incident that led to WWI was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary.
There are many other fundamental reasons for the war ranging from mutual defense alliances to imperialism to national security and disputed borders but as in all wars there are no winners, only losers. The losers are disabled combatants, children, and the survivors who cannot forget what they have been through. For the dead, life is simply over.
Mason’s story is about an Austro-Hungarian’ medical student from an aristocratic family who is thrown into the maelstrom of war. By circumstance, he is recruited into a field hospital in Poland because he is the only academically trained medical person. He is still a student, but his sketchy understanding of medicine and the human body give him some guidance on how to amputate limbs and treat life threatening diseases. The field hospital is in a former church that is managed by a nun who worked with former doctors and had some practical knowledge of medical treatment. Lucius, the hero, a 22-year-old is introduced to Margareta, a nun who is one year older. She has much more firsthand experience with war’s casualties. Her judgment sustains much of what Lucius does that tempers his novitiate understanding of medical practice.
It is a “…Winter Soldier” who survives the war that offers a surprising ending to Mason’s imaginative and well-written novel.
The precursor to the story’s surprising ending is that Lucius falls in love with Margareta, but they are separated by the invasion of Russian soldiers. They find each other after Lucius marriage and pending divorce to another woman. Lucius travels back to where Margareta lived and finds she has moved to another town. He travels to the new town and finds Margareta at a local hospital. This is not the end of the story. A surprise remains.
Mason’s story is an entertaining novel of particular interest today because of the truth of Mark Twain’s observation: “History never repeat itself, but it does often rhyme”. One leaves this novel hoping Russia leaves Ukraine in peace, Palestine and Israel with an acceptable agreement for both countries, and a war that does not widen.
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