Good Hope Road

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At the outset of the Great War in 1914, New England Yankee James Stonebridge and Louisiana native Obadaiah Nelson volunteer with the French Foreign Legion. They are among a handful of Americans who did so, young men fired up by idealism and lured by the chance of adventure and escape. Despite their very different backgrounds, James and Obadaiah forge a friendship that helps them endure the squalor of the trenches and the brutal realities of war. Fourteen years after the end of the war, Major James Stonebridge has become a haunted recluse, and the burden of his care falls upon his son, Jim. Jim has fallen in love with Madeleine, a spirited bohemian who brings light and laughter to the sombre world of the apple farm. But it is only when the Major decides to join the Bonus marchers in Washington that Jim begins to fathom his father's past. From pre-war Paris to the trenches of Europe and the apple orchards of New England, Good Hope Road is a powerful and deeply affecting story of the legacy of war, the strength of the human spirit and the search for redemption. Read by John Chancer