Robert Faulk was born on a farm and educated in a small rural school. Following his engineering studies, he worked in construction while taking singing lessons and performing locally. The manager of the Canadian Opera Company took him under his wing, and in 1973 his advice led Robert to take his wife and three children to Germany to pursue a career as an opera singer. Over the next seven years, the author studied opera and sang in German theatres. He met many people whose memories of the war were still fresh, and who were willing to share them. Their stories were universally traumatic and deeply personal. Faulk blended these stories into a five-book series he calls The Songs of War, which describes a war that killed fifty million people from a human, personal perspective. The author’s first singing teacher is the heroine of Fools, Angels and the Devil and A Song of Sorrow, the first two books in the five-book series.