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A Westward Quest for Amity

Post WWI Novel of New Beginnings

by Peggy McGee

Living in enemy territory on the border between Germany and France in the Alsace-Lorraine Province, the last months of the war in 1918 proved terrifying when the skirmishes continued to the very last hour of the war. Despite the lingering hope of an Armistice, a vicious influenza suddenly emerged, unexpectedly taking the lives of the weak or aged. Little did seventeen-year-old twins Lia and Eli realize that they would be the only ones to survive this scourge surrounding their family. Fortunately, prior to that, the family had prepared for the worse while the desperate German army attempted to recruit any male they could find the final months of the war. It was while they were burying their grandmother who succumbed to the influenza late at night, when they were encountered by Allied soldiers who had need of their farmhouse for the injured of the latest skirmish. Now orphaned with no means to refuse them, they relented, realizing they had no choice. Lia, dressed as a boy, prepared them food while Eli helped to tend to any of their other needs.
Yet, a German platoon soon surrounded the farmhouse with the intent of destroying anything harboring their enemy before that final hour. Discovering that their intent was to burn them out, the twins disclosed their hidden cellar escape route and tunnel that ultimately led them to a well-supplied cave where they hunkered down until the Armistice. Once rescued by the Allied forces with no home or known relatives, the soldiers devised a plan in gratitude for saving their lives to sponsor the twins in a new home in America. Despite their optimistic intentions of leaving their destroyed homeland behind, did they discover that there were only challenges awaiting them in the future. Here is the story of Lia and Eli Schmidt and the soldiers whom they helped to save.