THE CARTOGRAPHER OF NO MAN'S LAND by P.S. Duffy

I am amazed that this book was written by a woman.  At least half of it takes place on the battlefield in France during WWI, and it is so realistic that I definitely felt as though she had first-hand experience in the trenches.  The main character is Angus, a Nova Scotian whose father is adamantly against the war.  However, Angus’s good friend Ebbin, who also happens to be Angus’s wife’s brother, is at the front and may be missing.  Angus expects to join the war effort as a cartographer so that he can find out what has happened to Ebbin, but, due to an overabundance of cartographers, he finds himself in the infantry and eventually becomes an officer.  Back home, the story revolves around Angus’s young son, Simon Peter, who idolizes a teacher from Germany who comes under suspicion of the locals.  This book is exceedingly dreary and just did not hold my attention very well.  I kept waiting for something positive to happen, but whenever it did, my joy was short-lived.  The chapters that take place in Nova Scotia are largely devoted to descriptions of boats, and I am not much of a maritime person.  Apparently the author does have first-hand sailing experience, and the Nova Scotia sections ring true in that regard, but we landlubbers don’t get much respite from the horrors of war while reading about boat dimensions.  Also, maybe I just wasn’t a very astute reader, but I felt that the author introduced characters without any explanation of who they were or what their relationship was to the main characters.  I do like to figure out some things for myself, but in this case I often wondered if I had missed something.  All in all, I am obviously not the intended audience for this book.