Impelled by the serendipitous discovery of a long lost correspondence, Robert Best, aged 70, embarks upon a nostalgic train journey into the past. His intention to find the answers to the riddle that has plagued his sanity for half a century. Still trapped within his youth and a hostage of yesteryear, he undertakes a final pilgrimage in the hope of exhuming a star-crossed love. A 'true love', ill-fated by his Polish fiancée's exorbitant striving for autonomy. A consummate relationship that could not survive through the heinous belligerence of a World War.
Excerpt
The following morning we rose early and went for a walk before breakfast. I took Anya to Culloden battlefield where we strolled amongst the purple heather, scanning the names of the defeated clans. The unimposing stone epitaphs glowed in the morning sun, casting shadows over the sacred ground where a crimson tide of slaughter had once flowed. Anya stood silent with respect, gazing at the roll call of Scotland's finest families and for the first time i saw the pain of homesickness darken her eyes. There would now be many similar, perfidious heaths encroaching upon her homeland. Stalin and Hitler were seeing to that and would continue to do so until stopped.
Things are not so bright here, Poland has changed so much and I'm not sure if it will ever be the same again. Even though spring has arrived the population remains submerged in the dark winter of the past six years and I don't know what the future holds for our people. The scars of six million deaths might just be too deep to heal, the mourning may be interminable. The air is no longer sweet as you'd remember it, but bitter with the stench of heartbreak. Not even the ocean of tears that has been, and will continue to be, wept is able to wash away the pugnent memories of German tenure.
Poznan was not how I fondly and vividly remembered it. Heavy industry in conjunction with a rapaciously demanding communist state had taken its excessive toll. The land was grey and looked exhausted by an environmentally unfriendly government's intensity and greed to milk every last frop of fossil fuel dry from a once abundant source. If ever a country had been raped and pillaged then Poland was she. The sweet River Warta, where Wlad and I had once swam and fished, was now discoloured, filthy and reougnantly odious from serious chemical discharges. The waters were so polluted I doubted whether any species of fish had adapted to the chemical warfare they'd been subjected to. Even overheard the late autumn sun had no firepower to pierce a hole in the sky's armoury of carcinogenic emissions. Manking had well and truly ruined Poznan's once quaint ambience. Perhaps the authentic reason why the Kremlin had sanctioned Poland her independence, was more an economical decision rather than a military one.
Admiral Robert Sheppard and his starship, the Phoenix, are back for their latest interplanetary adventure. Mysteries, new alien civilizations, and danger await the intrepid Star Knight and his loyal allies.
Ninety-Nine Novellas, Part II (1,125 book pages) is a collection of 99 popular Jay Dubya stories and it is the companion e-book to Ninety-Nine Novellas (1,600 book pages).
