One of my favourite symphonies is Gustav Mahler’s Second. I listened to it as I shaped Reap the Whirlwind. Here is the link. Mahler Symphony No. 2 The beginning of Mahler’s Resurrection symphony raises questions of life and death while expressing a message of hope but leaves the question of eternal life after death unanswered. In this, the symphony’s structure resembles a Requiem Mass, and indeed, I called the book ‘Requiem for a City’ before changing it to ‘Reap the Whirlwind.’

The book begins on 30/31 March 1944, with British Bomber Command’s worst catastrophe of the war, a bungled attack on Nürnberg in which the Luftwaffe shot down 95 out of 795 bombers, and another ten crashed on their way home, a total loss of 11.9%. Almost a thousand airmen died or were captured, more airmen than the RAF had lost in the entire Battle of Britain. Willie McLaughlin watches the disaster unfold from his seat in the rear turret of his Lancaster and, for the first time, meets the man who would become his nemesis. He is Erik Stephanie, a Messerschmitt 110 night fighter pilot, and it is his job to kill the rear gunner and destroy the Lancaster, ‘C for Charley.’ But Willie and ‘C for Charley’ survive the mission, and the crew celebrates at the Blue Bell Inn.

Norma Stanfield lost her husband to a night fighter ten months before Willie sat down in the Blue Bell. When she looked at him, she decided she had grieved long enough. Brian was dead, his body riddled by machine gun bullets as he sat in the rear turret of his Lancaster. Norma’s family buried him in the family plot, and she still went to his grave every Sunday, but she had cried until there were no more tears and then she had cursed the RAF. She felt disloyal to Brian—that her desires should wait, but the loneliness was more than she could bear. She needed someone in her bed.

When Willie sat down, Norma knew he was what she was looking for. He was short, like Brian, but so was she, and she had decided long ago not to have a man she had to look up to. No one would call him handsome—his face resembled a moonscape, cratered by pimples during a tumultuous adolescence. He was nicely proportioned, which would be an asset for Norma’s plans, and because she felt no attraction to him, there would be no chance he would replace Brian in her heart. He was perfect!

She questioned the waitress, notorious for sizing up the men who frequented the bar, and Marlene said, “Him? No girl would kiss that face, let alone sleep with it! And I guarantee that boy has no experience. Forget about him, but the pilot, Steve, or Ronnie, the Rhodesian gunner…” She hooked her finger over her lower lip. “Now, those two would do nicely!” Norma smiled and decided Willie was the perfect man for what she had in mind.

Norma was famous among the airmen who frequented the Blue Bell. Although trained to sing classical music, her voice had the perfect qualities to sing popular songs, especially those recorded by Vera Lynn. She began every night with ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ and ended with a singalong, singing a soaring descant to the men she had taught to sing ‘Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.’ Tonight, after she passed the ammunition, she would sing Vera Lynn’s version of, ‘I’m in the Mood for Love.’ And then, she would take Willie back to her hotel room.

Willie’s nemesis, Erik Stephanie, married Marita before the war, and they had a son, Walther. They lived in Heilbronn with Marita’s mother, and Mother and Daughter made tank parts in what had been a motorcycle factory before the war.

Erik watched city after city destroyed by bombs as night after night, British bombers dropped a cocktail of bombs designed to penetrate to the cellars and set the buildings on fire, killing as many people as possible. As the British invented better radars and more effective bombs and navigation systems that guided ‘Pathfinder’ aircraft, the list of potential targets untouched by British bombs became shorter. Before 1944 a small city like Heilbronn had not been worthy of a full attack, but as Erik watched the British destroy new objectives every night, he feared Heilbronn’s name would soon rise to the top and, filled with a sense of dread, he immersed himself in the hopeless task of shooting down all the British bombers.

Marita loved music and purchased an illegal copy of Lili Marleen, forbidden by Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministerium because he thought it would demoralize German soldiers. Despite Goebbels’ ‘Verbot,’ or perhaps partly because of it, the song became the most popular on both sides of the war, heard by German soldiers on the ‘Belgrad Sendung’ and Allied soldiers on ‘BBC Forces Program,’ the British forces overseas radio station. Listen to the original recording of ‘Lili Marleen by Lale Andersen,’ and then the English version by Marlene Dietrich. Then watch this short film, also titled ‘Lili Marleen.’ This simple song immortalizes the futility of war.

Willie struggles with his role in bombing Germany’s cities, and when he hears Norma sing the Mozart Requiem in the Lincoln Cathedral, his world collapses. Listen to the recording while you read Chapter Twenty-six.

The attack on Heilbronn begins in chapter 34, and I recommend listening to the last movement of Gustav Mahrler’s Second Symphony before, and again while you read it. I find it distracting when I listen and read simultaneously, but the scene becomes cinematic when I read a section and then listen to a corresponding bit. If you are interested, here is information and a translation you might use as you listen: Mahler’s Symphonies.

I hope you enjoy Reap the Whirlwind as much as I enjoyed writing it. Willie came from a British officer I knew, and Erik was the father of someone I met in Stuttgart. He introduced me to his mother and they told me about their experiences in the bombing of Heilbronn. The accounts of events in the book are fictional, but are based on extensive research and stories told to me by people who experienced them.

I don’t know where we’re going, but it’s time…there’s no going back.

I began writing a long time ago, with letters to my wife before we were married. She worked in the veteran’s hospital in Ste Anne de Bellevue, Quebec, and I was an engineering student at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She still has those letters, but don’t hold your breath…

I sang a lot, most of the time at the top of my lungs while driving heavy machinery. The advantage of singing to the accompaniment of a noisy engine is that you can only hear the best part of your voice—like singing in the shower. And you can’t hear anyone tell you to shut up.

I sang to my children, and they pretended to like it. My other gig was singing my wife to sleep…at least, I thought she fell asleep, but now with the benefit of hindsight, she might have faked it so I would stop.

Finally, my family had had enough, and the neighbours threatened to burn the house down if I didn’t shut up. Since I was addicted to the sound of my voice, my wife suggested two options…singing lessons or silence. She pointed out an ad in the local paper: “Madame Dubois is opening auditions for new students. Call…to arrange an audition.” A couple of weeks later, on a Saturday, my wife said, “Come straight home from work this afternoon. You’re auditioning for Madame Dubois at four-thirty.” She handed me my lunch box, and her face said, “You had better do this.”

I had a repertoire of Western songs that would take a month to sing, but I didn’t know a single piece of classical, and Madame Dubois didn’t sound like someone who had a repertoire of country music, so I had to find a compromise.

Before marriage and children, my parents took me to New York City, and the lights of Broadway captured my heart. It was the heyday of the musicals, and we did what one did on Broadway in 1958—we went to see “My Fair Lady” and “The Musicman,” and I fell in love with Broadway’s music.

My parents bought recordings of both musicals, and I wore them out, learning all the parts in both productions. So, naturally, I chose a song from “My Fair Lady” for my audition. My wife, a bona fide musician who plays the piano, taught me “Wouldn’t it be loverly.” Liza Doolittle, the cockney female lead—Julie Andrews on our recording—sings that song in barely understandable cockney-accented English. I memorized the piece precisely as she sang it on the record, complete with the accent. My wife taught me what I considered the little things…like the right notes at the right time. Wouldn’t it Be Loverly – Julie Andrews

Mrs. Black, Madame Dubois’s accompanist, was a white-haired lady with a dry sense of humour. Right after I said, “I’m pleased to meet you,” and handed her the piano score, she said, “Are you sure you want to sing that? It’s a woman’s song, you know.” I immediately regretted refusing my wife’s advice to sing “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.”

Madame listened to me sing Liza Doolittle’s soliloquy stone-faced, even sympathetically, but Mrs. Black sniggered and snorted more than a few times. Despite my nervousness and the lack of a covering diesel engine, I dove into the wistful song, belting out a rendition that would have been more appropriate for the national anthem at a hockey game. When I finished, Madame Dubois sent a smiling Mrs. Black home, and I’m sure I heard her laughing as she went down the front steps.

As soon as Mrs. Black was out of earshot, Madame Dubois said, “Young man, you are a Heldentenor, and you will sing Wagner.” I opened my mouth to ask the obvious, and she said, “Don’t worry about that; I will teach you how.” Fortunately, she didn’t laugh. I had no idea what a Helden Tenor was, and Wagner sounded like the name of a paint sprayer or a company that made brake parts for trucks.

The years passed, the neighbours’ complaints about my singing subsided, and Madame Dubois introduced me to Mario Lanza’s golden voice, the student prince mario lanza. She followed that with Franco Corelli’s magnificent sound, franco corelli nessun dorma, and finally I found my voice and Richard Wagner. The recording here is of the first Wagner aria I learned, sung by Jonas Kaufmann, my favourite tenor. It’s a love song about spring. Jonas Kaufmann: Wagner – Die Walküre.

On Saturday afternoons, I worked on my stock car in the company’s machinery repair shop. I listened to “Saturday Afternoon at the Opera” on CBC—prompting my pit crew to protest, but to no avail. I bought recordings of tenor arias from German and Italian operas and a stereo for the shop and, when I was alone, sang along with CBC or the recordings until I was hoarse. I sang the most difficult arias in the repertoire with all the gusto my vocal cords could take.

Eventually, with my wife’s support, I began to hear Lanza and Corelli in my voice and believed, naively, that I could learn to sing like that. With Madame’s blessing, I started to study repertoire with a teacher in Toronto, and he prepared me for an audition with the manager of the Canadian Opera Company, Mr. Herman Geiger-Torel. I sang a couple of arias for him, and he asked me to audition again in a more formal setting. At the second audition, this time in the Macmillan Theatre, I met Jean Cox, a Helden Tenor guesting in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of “Götterdämmerung.” He was an American Heldentenor living and singing in Mannheim, Germany, and his advice was a critical factor in my life. The General Music Director of a German opera house who was conducting Siegfried was also there but disappeared without speaking to me. Following the audition and a frank conversation, Mr. Geiger-Torel suggested I bring my wife to see him.

In the end, Mr. Geiger-Torel recommended that I not accept the contract that the music director had offered. He said my voice was acceptable for a German theatre, but my musicianship skills were, in his words, “so sad.” He also pointed out that I couldn’t speak German and a stint in a German university might help with that. Herr Geiger-Torel specifically recommended that I study with Professor Lindenbaum in Detmold, Germany, if he would accept me, and that I apply for a scholarship at the Nordwestdeutsch Musikakadamie Opernschule. I was successful in getting both the place with Professor Lindenbaum and the scholarship.

My wife and I had three children at the time, and none of us spoke a word of German. I couldn’t go to Germany without my family, so naturally, as I returned to Moncton, I wrote off the idea. But my wife said, “I think we should go. The children will be fine in German schools, and we can all learn another language—how hard can it be?” And that is why we recently celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary.

When Madame Dubois invited me to her home for our final goodbye, she showed me a medal. She said, “This is the Croix de Guerre I earned fighting the Bosch, and I want to tell you what I did so that you will know a little more about the people you will be living and working with.

It took her several hours to tell her story, and those hours changed everything for me. Madame Dubois was an opera singer in Belgium, France, and Germany during the war. A wave of dramatic events carried her to a career with the Résistance as a spy, smuggling Jews out of Germany and generally tormenting the Nazis. Her father, a prominent member of the Brussels community and a leader of the Résistance, managed both her singing and spying careers. But eventually, perhaps inevitably, the Gestapo caught and tortured her—she showed me her scars. But her father’s influence, together with the help of an SS officer, succeeded in freeing her, although the physical and psychological damage remained.

The first and second books in ‘The Songs of War’ series, titled Fools, Angels and the Devil and A Song of Sorrow, are loosely based on the story Madame Dubois related to me. Her story was the beginning of an odyssey, a journey through the horrendous years leading up to and continuing after the Second World War, told from the perspective of people from both sides who lived it.

The Songs of War series is not a historical account of events but a look into ordinary people’s lives through the lens of this terrible period. For the victims who wrote that period in world history and those who are suffering a similar fate today, life was a fight for survival. The fight will continue until the world discovers that tyrants have no place in modern civilization. There are no Angels among tyrants, only Devils. And Fools are numerous among their victims.

Robert Faulk

I had written all of The Songs of War books before it occurred to me that I hadn’t properly introduced Juliette and Peter to my readers. Fortunately, I hadn’t published any of the books in the series, so I postponed everything until I wrote a prelude to the WWII series. Fools, Angels and the Devil takes place before the war, so naturally, I had to release it before any of The Songs of War books. Sooo, back to the computer and the recesses of my brain where the stories are hiding.

The Prelude to The Songs of War begins where all preludes are supposed to begin, at the beginning, when Juliette and Peter were barely aware of the affliction infecting their souls. They haven’t met, haven’t fallen in love, and their real life as remembered in my books has not yet begun. What affliction, you ask?… Why, the desperate need to sing, of course—an addiction many people are born with. Unfortunately, those bitten by the music bug are not necessarily given a corresponding gift of talent, but that’s what doctored recordings and tiled bathrooms are for. Fortunately for Peter and Juliette, the Talent Giver singled each of them out for a high dose, then threw them together in Munich during Hitler’s reshaping of Germany.

Juliette could always sing. When she was still in the womb, her mother sang naughty French songs to her, and after she was born, she put her in a basket under the piano while she played Mozart. She sang before she could form words, and composed melodies without lyrics. She sang in the convent where she went to school, despite the Sister’s efforts to keep her quiet. The Nuns finally surrendered, and Juliette’s mother found a singing teacher for her daughter.

Here is a recording of a young Ukrainian girl singing a song I learned at about that age. My father had taken me to hear Wilf Carter, another of the ‘yodelling cowboys,’ and somehow we wound up in a restaurant with him. My father told him how much I loved the ‘yodelling cowboy,’ Jimmie Rodgers, and Mister Carter asked if I could yodel. I simulated a yodel and he said, “Son, that’s not yodelling, but I’ll teach you before our dinner gets here.” Fifteen minutes later I could yodel, and despite a nerve disorder that paralyzes one of my cords, I can still follow this little girl; yodelling is a balm for the voice. Listen to her yodel and imagine Juliette. Watch the boy who at the beginning pretends not to be interested…watch him when she reaches the fast reprise yodel at the end. You’ve either got it or you haven’t!

София Шкидченко – Awesome Yodeling – Yodel Expert “Україна має талант-9”.Діти-2 [04.03.2017] – YouTube

Peter’s voice developed in a different way, on a different track, one not far removed from mine. Whereas Juliette was born to wealthy parents who loved and spent fortunes on music and art—her father was an art dealer—Peter’s father was a machinist for M.A.N. (Mannheim. Augsburg. Nürnberg). They build trucks, tanks, and heavy equipment as they did then, and Heinz’s hopes for Peter had nothing to do with art or music. Peter’s father wanted him to study engineering, his son’s natural gift.

However, the church organist knew what she had when he joined her boy’s choir and, although she knew nothing about teaching voice, she taught him to sing solos in church. She sought out recordings, introducing him to the famous tenors of the day. Peter gravitated to Beniamino Gigli and in particular the famous aria, Spirto Gentil from La Favorita by Gaetano Donizetti. At the organist’s urging, Peter’s mother bought the record and allowed him to play it on the precious phonograph Heinz, her husband, had given her. Below is the recording Peter listened to.

Plot Note: The King has given Fernand, the leader of the Castille army, the hand of Léonor as a reward for his victory over the Moors. But now Fernand has found out that she’s been unfaithful…with the King. He is heartbroken, of course, and feeling intensely sorry for himself as he stands in front of a monastery. Forced to choose between becoming a monk or singing, he decides to sing this painful aria.

La Favorita: Spirto gentil (Recorded 1921) – YouTube

A tenor’s stock and trade are his high notes, the ones that ring off the ceiling and walls while girls and ladies swoon. Every tenor who ever sang a note over ‘A’ has known the terror of approaching that note, and the thrill when it lands precisely in ‘the place.’ The vibrations in his head are as addictive as opium, and when he can’t find that ‘place,’ he feels as though life has no meaning; death would be a relief. Yes, I can tell you from experience it is that bad!

Here is a recording by a Peruvian tenor, Juan Diego Florez—for me the best lyric tenor in the world. This is the most feared aria in the lyric tenor repertoire, except perhaps the one from William Tell, or maybe the one from…oh, never mind. This aria is from the opera La Fille du Regiment, by Gaetano Donizetti. The tenor has just volunteered to join the regiment that had adopted Marie when she was a helpless refugee, hoping thus to win her hand. This is how a tenor celebrates scoring a game-winning goal.

La fille du régiment – ‘Ah! mes amis’ (Donizetti; Juan Diego Flórez, The Royal Opera) – YouTube

A voice like that should have a military classification…it’s a weapon of mass seduction.

Juliette and Peter got off on the wrong foot, and their teacher decided to do something about it. He had already decided to teach them as a unit, but he wanted the pair to at least tolerate one another, so he hatched a devious plan…in the opera lexicon it’s called a duet. He screamed at them, threatened to expel them, and threw things until they finally sang this love duet like Anna Netrebko and Matthew Polenzani sing it.

(8) Matthew Polenzani & Anna Netrebko – Tornami a dir che m’ami ( Don Pasquale – Gaetano Donizetti ) – YouTube

Well, let me tell you that singing that aria with a beautiful soprano is one of the hardest things a tenor can do, especially if he is married with three daughters and….oh, never mind, that’s not the point. Even Hitler couldn’t pry Juliette and Peter apart once they could sing that duet like that!

But wait, Juliette and Peter sang another duet to seal the deal. This one is from Der Vogelhändler, (The Birdseller) by Carl Zeller. It’s an operetta so the plot is pretty much the same as all the other operettas. This particular scene is a tiny twist in that the fickle birdseller is two-timing Christel, his pretty postmistress girlfriend because he thinks she is two-timing him. Marie, the wife of someone who is very important, gives him a rose, which is enough to get any tenor to sing, and they spend the next five minutes telling one another what happens when you give one another roses in Tirol. Tirol is part of Austria, the part where all the yodellers and skiers come from, but that’s another story. If you believe the words in the duet, giving roses away in Tirol is dangerous…you could be giving yourself as well. The tenor is Fritz Wunderlich, in my opinion one of the most beautiful tenor voices the world has heard. Unfortunately, just as his career blossomed he died in a tragic accident. He fell down a flight of stairs. We have a few recordings, but only enough to deepen the loss.

Der Vogelhändler: Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol – YouTube

The next recording you should listen to before you read the book—oh no…you haven’t started it yet, have you?—is this one. Juliette has a weak bottom…no, not that bottom, the lower part of her voice! She is timid about making those sexy honey-coated sounds that drive tenors like Peter crazy. This is the aria Professor Garcia uses to convince her she’s a woman.

Plot Note: Rusalka, a water nymph, meets a prince as he swims in her lake and, being a teenager, immediately falls in love with him. She wants to become human and live on the land with her Prince, but she is a nymph and mythical creatures aren’t supposed to fall in love with humans. Her father, a water sprite, is very upset, but pressed by his uncontrollable daughter agrees to consult the local witch to see what can be done. While she waits for Ježibaba, the witch, Rusalka asks the moon to tell the Prince of her love.

The singer is Renee Fleming, a great singer and a great lady. Listen to her sing Antonin Dvoràk’s Rusalka as she prays to the moon; imagine her sound soaring out of your mouth to the ears of the enthralled lady in the back row…. Watch Renée keep the unnamed conductor in her peripheral vision. Watch her flick her eyes to him in crucial spots, perfectly following his wonderful changes in tempi. This is an excellent example of a rare marriage between a conductor and a singer. Like all marriages, It’s not often you find one this perfect. If the God you pray to allows you to experience such a live performance, you will remember every nuance until you die.

Renee Fleming,@Dvorak – Song to the moon – Rusalka – YouTube

The finalé comes from the first opera Juliette and Peter would sing together, La Bohème, by Puccini. They work on the scenes in the Munich Conservatory’s opera school, and this is the duet that ends the first act. I have sung in over sixty performances of La Bohème and I never miss a chance to see it again.

Unfortunately for those who don’t understand it, the subtitles are in Italian, but the gist of it is love at first sight, then manipulation, and finally, some serious flirting. It drips with love, sex, and joy. For those of you who think Rudolpho takes the ‘f’ at the end because he can’t sing a high ‘c,’ I suggest you listen to a few of Rolando Villazón’s recordings. Perhaps he is just being a gentleman, but more likely he is singing what Puccini, who loved sopranos and wouldn’t want a tenor stepping on her ‘c,’ wrote.

OPERA PLANET Anna Netrebko Rolando Villazón “O Soave Fanciulla” La Bohème Puccini 4K ULTRA HD – YouTube

The singers are Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón, two of the finest opera singers who have ever sung those roles. Anna Netrebko, Mimi, is of Russian/Austrian lineage and has been given the highest artistic award Russia has to offer, The People’s Artist of Russia (2008), and the Austrian Kammersängerin award in 2017. Rolando Villazón, Rudolpho, is a Mexican opera singer, artistic and stage director, author, etc. They have sung many roles together, and it shows. In case someone should get any ideas, Rolando is happily married and has two sons. Anna did marry a tenor, but not Rolando. She married the Azerbaijani tenor, Yusif Eyvazov, with whom she often sings. So, let’s hear it for their role-playing in this romantic duet.

I am going to assume you listened to all those tidbits, either before, during, or after reading my book. If you haven’t started the book yet, know that these excerpts are not the heart of the story, they are the soul of it. Hitler’s transition from Germany’s saviour in 1933 to an insane dictator in 1939 is the cold heart of the story, and Juliette and Peter represent both sides of the German people’s dilemma during that period.

Fools, Angels and the Devil is not a book about opera. It’s not about music in particular. These are only vehicles I use to introduce the reader to the forces that drove Germany to a National Socialist dictatorship that would, in six short years, extinguish fifty million people’s lives in Europe. Atrocities would be committed on all sides, but Hitler wins that competition by a country mile. The only glimmer of hope for humanity that still lived after the United States dropped two atomic bombs in 1945 was that the magnitude of the horror would preclude such madness from ever happening again. The ending of Fools, Angels and the Devil foreshadows the insanity to come—it is not a warning or a prediction, it is a prelude, an overture to what was inevitable. For me, trying to paint a picture of the worst catastrophe the world has ever experienced that we as rational people can understand, words were insufficient. I chose the power of music, in many ways my element, to help me and my readers understand that it could happen again.

My last comment about this adventure, should you choose to join me, is a word of warning. Do not be lulled into the impression that the next book, A Song of Sorrow, is going to continue with this placid tone. In Europe, the next ‘War to end all Wars’ is on the horizon, and Juliette and Peter will be swept up in the vortex of its awful whirlwind. Keep in mind that war has few happy endings, and you will cry. But life goes on despite it. The books follow the precarious lives of people on both sides; sometimes their paths cross, and sometimes the meeting ends tragically. Peace can’t come until Adolph Hitler’s Germany is crushed under the weight of the world.

But you should also know that most of my characters survive to tell me their story.

Welcome to my fourth newsletter. If you want to review the first three, they are Blogs on my website, thesongsofwar.com. The first four books of The Songs of War series are available there, and the fifth will be published in April.

Readers like you sometimes decide whether to buy a book by reading the reviews, so it is essential for you to rate the book and leave a review. You can contact me at thesongsofwar@gmail.com. to get a free book in exchange for a promise to review it honestly.

Contrary to popular belief, war is not natural, although many people, for different reasons, accept it as such. In today’s media-soaked world, where ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ are more important than live friends, we are fed a constant stream of what we euphemistically call information. In times of war, cable news and social media feed us glimpses into the lives of victims—those who fight, those who die, and those who grieve. We sit in our comfortable chairs and watch sorrow play out live on our flat-screen televisions, laptops, phones and tablets, muting the commercials while we discuss what we should do about dinner. We grow accustomed to death, loss and suffering, and the networks scurry to dramatize fresh tragedies. A television war leaves us thinking of war as entertainment, like a sport, full of clichés. We are only indirectly aware of the human cost. A thousand dead? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Millions? We can’t differentiate.

There is nothing in our lives that moves our emotions like music. From popular songs to symphonies and operas, we are moved to laughter and tears. Ancient civilizations sang their history to their children. The Book of Psalms in the Bible’s Old Testament is history written to be sung. Most aboriginal cultures sing their history, keeping it alive through song. Because we have been so desensitized to tragedy, words are no longer enough to describe war. Ergo, music as an expressive medium in my wartime series, “A Song of Sorrow.”

Juliette, my first singing teacher, taught me how to express myself with my singing voice, using the primitive part of my vocal cords to produce a melodic sound. I learned to tell the story hidden in my character’s emotions by singing, and now that my singing fails me, I write it in prose. “A Song of Sorrow” is Juliette’s story of unbearable sorrow in a counterpunctual world of beautiful music. The link is to the complete opera, which is important as accompaniment to the book. La Traviata

Juliette’s first duet with Alfredo begins at 14:00; Her ‘freedom’ aria begins at 21:40; The second duet begins at 31:20; Their fight at the party begins at 1:23:10; The death of Violette begins at 1:37:40. To add context, these are the points in the opera mentioned in the book, but the entire opera is critical to the spirit of the book.

When Juliette chose to fight the Nazis, she declared a personal war on the most intelligent, manipulative evil in the world. Her enemy was not an alliance of fools but a formidable organization of experts in their fields. When the Nazis crossed the line on Kristallnacht, Juliette devoted her considerable talent to fighting a battle against the regime she hated. Her intelligence equalled her enemy’s, but could she learn to be merciless? And would that be enough?

 La Bohéme Act III  La Bohéme Act IV

I have chosen two excerpts from La Bohéme to close my newsletter. The first is the duet /quartet from Act III, performed in Salzburg in 2012. The subtitles are in German, but for those who don’t speak it, the plot is simple: Mimi has tuberculosis and must have a warm place to live, something a poor writer like Rudolpho can’t offer, so Mimi and Rudolpho say goodbye until spring while their friends, Marcello and Musetta, quarrel in the background. The second excerpt in this tragedy is the final scene in the same performance of the opera.

I want to thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. I will continue to explain the intent behind the books, and music will continue to be a significant theme. The next book,  Book 3: Reap the Whirlwind is available on my website, thesongsofwar.com. Juliette has a minor role in a story that looks at the battle to save the small city of Heilbronn from British bombs from both sides.

The Cloverfield Bee Wars is an allegory, and most readers don’t know or care what an allegory is. If you’ve read Animal Farm by George Orwell or Watership Down by Richard Adams, you’ve read an allegory. The first example uses farm animals to illustrate human behaviour, and the second uses rabbits… I use bees.

Bees live in a society whose basic structure has not changed for thousands of years. Pharaohs’ tombs contain pots of honey that you could still spread on your toast and safely eat, and ancient drawings of primitive hives indicate that man has been in partnership with bees since before the pharaohs’ slaves built the pyramids.

Humans have evolved in a technological sense, but like bees, their social structure hasn’t changed much. “If it ain’t broke…” has been man’s guiding principle, one where wars are waged against those who are different, justified by nothing but the perception of differences. We have split into herds that we call nations, and we tell one another that our herd is the best and if only other herds were like us…

But what if we didn’t believe that our religion, appearance, and social structure are sacred? What if a messiah was born who had no prejudices against any group or individual? And what if she convinced the majority of society that respect for everyone’s differences would make every society better?

Of course, there would be opposition to that, and the new messiah would be faced with resistance from the established order…and what if the established order were ruled by a tyrant? Social structure has unbreakable rules, but her idea of change is about breaking rules, creating opposing forces. one following the leader against change and another convinced that social change is absolutely necessary. And when the old rules are broken, society’s laws must be enforced. That requires an army, and armies are useless without a war… And a field of clover is a good excuse to fight a war, if you are a bee.