THE RISING TIDE (PAPERBACK)

Description

THE RISING TIDE
by Jeff Shaara, 2006

The Rising Tide is the first of what will become a trilogy of novels, telling the story of the European theater of the Second World War through the eyes of both the famous and not so famous. This first volume deals primarily with the story of the campaigns in North Africa and Sicily, America’s first involvements in that theater of the war. Among the extraordinary personalities who are such a part of this story are names that are familiar to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the war: George Patton, Erwin Rommel, Dwight Eisenhower, Mark Clark, Omar Bradley, as well as Montgomery, Churchill, Roosevelt, and yes, Adolf Hitler.

In my last novel, To The Last Man, the horrifying saga of the First World War was told not only through the eyes of the generals, but of the foot soldier (and pilot) as well. That pattern is repeated in The Rising Tide. Two of the primary voices are relatively unknown characters, a 24 year old tank gunner and a 21 year old paratroop sergeant, Americans who confront the enemy in the deserts and rocky hills of North Africa and then, in the desolate countryside of Sicily.

As with every story I’ve done, I feel passionately that this story must be told, and must be told differently than you might have read it in high school. This first book will be followed by The Steel Wave, to be released this May, and then a third volume (not yet titled) that will take this story to the end of the war in Europe. I also plan to do a fourth book that covers the end of the war in the Pacific. I hope to complete these subsequent volumes within 18-24 months of each other. (My publisher hopes so too.) The third volume, which I am working on now, will focus primarily on the Battle of the Bulge and the fall of Hitler, and will include many of the same characters from the first two books.