Angel Down

Cyril Bagger has talked his way through every trouble life has thrown at him, and the Great War is only the largest and loudest confidence trick he has yet had to survive.

A preacher's son turned swindler turned reluctant private, he has learned that the trenches of the Meuse-Argonne reward nerve and a persuasive tongue far more than they reward courage. Then he and four other men are sent out into No Man's Land on a small, filthy errand of mercy: to find a wounded comrade and end his suffering. What lies broken in the mud is not a soldier at all. It appears to be an angel, brought down by artillery, still breathing, and it may hold the power to stop the war entirely. That power is worth a great deal, and each of the five men wants something different from it. Suspicion moves through the group faster than any German shell, and the miracle they have found begins to look less like salvation than like a test they are already failing.

Told in a single unbroken sentence that gallops from horror to grace and back again, this is a war novel unlike any other.