DEFINITELY A GOOD READ

While I was conducting research for Who Is to Blame, my first novel in the Petrovo series, I kept bumping into this thing called the Crimean War (1853-1856) which pitted Russia against England and France. It became the setting for my second novel, How Did I Get Here.

One of the reasons the Crimean War grabbed my attention and wouldn't let go was the staggering carnage on the battlefield, with an even greater number of fatalities due to disease, malnutrition, and winter exposure. Not until World War I would more people die as victims of war.

In his book, The Legacy of the Crimean War, anthropologist Robert Edgerton sums up the War with this statement: "Perhaps the most fundamental lesson to be learned from a look back at the Crimean War is how easy it is for nations to blunder into wars that serve no purpose or cannot be won."

I definitely give The Legacy of the Crimean War two thumbs up - not as a book about war, but for its insights into the human reaction to war.