Author Description

Lying about his age and enlisting in the British Army at the young age of fourteen, Neuman joins one of the three all-Jewish brigades in World War I to fight in Egypt and Palestine to help secure a Jewish homeland. Two generations later his grandson, John, unlocks a safe and finds a mysterious letter that begins a journey of discovery about his grandfather that includes the horrors of war, an illicit love affair, and espionage. This novel reveals the little-known history of both boy soldiers and the three segregated Jewish Legions of the Royal Fusiliers known as The Judeans. These young men signed up to fight in the Middle East during World War I under the British promise of winning back Palestine from the Turkish Empire to form what would later become the State of Israel. Based on the True Story of the Youngest Officer in the Jewish Legions of the British Army in Egypt and Palestine during World War I