THE WINTER SOLDIER by Daniel Mason

Lucius is a young medical student in Austria when WWI breaks out.  He enlists and finds himself as the only doctor in a makeshift hospital in a church in the Carpathian Mountains.  He learns to perform amputations and to treat other battle wounds, with the very competent help of Sister Margarete.  His job is to patch these soldiers up and send them back to the front, but one soldier completely captures his attention.  That soldier appears to have some sort of PTSD or brain injury, and Lucius, in his efforts to cure him, makes a decision that ultimately has tragic consequences.  His relationship with Sister Margarete deepens, and then the plot takes off in a different direction.  This book has a few moments of frivolity, but they are sandwiched in between horrific moments, including one involving a vicious conscription officer, reminiscent of Confederate conscription during our Civil War.  Lucius is admirable in many ways, but he tends to get carried away at times, and these bouts of passion do not always result in a positive outcome.  Author Daniel Mason is very effective when it comes to planting the reader in a particular time and place, and he depicts Lucius’s bewilderment very vividly when he first arrives at the field hospital.  Lucius eventually becomes a man on an obsessive quest, and again, Mason makes the reader feel Lucius’s anxiety and fervent determination.  The best part of this book, though, is the ending, which is a bit of a surprise in more ways than one.  I really liked The Piano Tuner, but not the ending, and I was steeling myself for a similar finish here.  The ending of this book, however, is much more satisfying.