In a small American town in the 1930s, Amos, a quiet giant of a man with a heroic spirit and a troubled past, is partly blinded in a locomotive accident. Aubrey, a sheltered boy of eleven whose patrician New England family employs Amos as a handyman, rushes to his aid.
As though heralding the twentieth century’s worst cataclysm, this disaster inaugurates an epic story of war, friendship, synchronicity, courage and despair. Over the next ten years, in the mountains and forests of North America and on the bloody battlefields of Europe, Amos’s and Aubrey’s trajectories will converge, sometimes critically. Although they inhabit very different worlds, their bond will shape each of their lives profoundly.
