As the world commemorates the hundredth anniversary of World War I, the literary canon of the war has consolidated around the memoirs written in the years after the Armistice by soldier-writers who served in the trenches. Another kind of Great War literature has been almost entirely ignored: the books written and published during the war by the greatest English, American, French, and German writers at work—books that show us how the best, most influential writers responded to an overpowering human and cultural catastrophe.Where Wars Go to Die: The Forgotten Literature of World War I explores this little-known cache of contemporary writings by the greatest novelists, poets, playwrights, and essayists of the war years, examining their interpretations and responses, weaving excerpts and quotations from their books into a narrative that focuses on the various ways civilian writers responded to an overwhelming historical reality.The authors whose war writings...

For the first time together, River Trilogy combines three classic works on fly fishing by W. D. Wetherell. Contained here are some of Wetherell's most poetic pieces, a combination of spontaneous journal entries, reflections on contemplative excursions, and outright fishing tales. Each passage is filled with moving imagery describing the beauty of the river and the natural world that surrounds it. The first book in the collection, Vermont River, is an elegy to the author's love of fly fishing in his native Vermont. Selected by Trout magazine as one of the thirty finest works on fly fishing, Vermont River will move readers with its radiant descriptions of Wetherell's beloved sport and region. In Upland Streams, Wetherell explores the meandering streams and crooked creeks that dot New England's landscape, the mighty rivers that flow through the Southwest, and the crags and lochs that fill the countryside of Scotland. Conveyed with characteristic...

When Vera decides to travel to an old house in the New England countryside for a month-long escape from some devastating news about her daughter, Cassie, she has no idea her life is about to change forever. It begins innocently enough—peeling the old wallpaper from the walls as a favor to the house’s owner. What she discovers underneath—written in India ink on the very walls of the house by a woman named Beth, in 1919—is the beginning of the reader’s unsettling crossing into the unknown world underneath the paper. The Writing on the Wall is a brilliantly realized journey into the connected lives of three women whose stories span a century, linked by the house they all briefly inhabit, and by the tragedies they've had to endure. And it's not just their own stories that reveal themselves. A brilliant schoolteacher, back from the war in the trenches, finds the pupils of his dreams. A young Vietnam draftee makes a stubbornly quirky separate peace. The moody, dangerously charismatic leader of a commune becomes the unlikeliest of heroes. An “ordinary” housewife's lonely battle propels her onto the national stage. A girl sent to Iraq tries making sense of the chaos and the pain. The Writing on the Wall is about stories that can't be told, but must be told—about secrets that can't be shared, but must be shared—and the surprising ways people find to confront the truth.From BooklistIn his latest novel, Wetherell (Hills like White Hills, 2009) finds a unique way to tell the stories of three women. Vera Savino retreats to the old New England house her sister owns in the wake of her daughter’s disgrace during a stint in the army. Vera insists on undertaking the remodeling project her sister planned, and she begins by stripping off the wallpaper. Underneath the many layers, she discovers a memoir of sorts written in tiny handwriting by Beth, a young woman who resided in the house in 1919. Vera becomes caught up in Beth’s confessions about her desire to continue her education after her marriage and her feelings for a charismatic teacher. As Vera strips the walls to follow Beth’s story, she discovers that another woman has followed suit. Dottie, a housewife who lived in the house in the 1960s, hid her son Andy, who went AWOL from the army. Beth’s and Dottie’s struggles help Vera find the courage to take her pen to the wall to recount the horrifying secret her daughter shared with her. --Kristine Huntley Review“W. D. Wetherell is a fearless acrobat with words and narrative structures. His work, filled with humor, warmth and wisdom, asks us to re-examine our recent history.” (Chicago Tribune )“W.D. Wetherell has a sharp, fresh eye and a complicated view of our dislocations, pains and dreams.” (New York Times )