The Anatomy of Courage launches this weekend. It's an alien war story told from the perspective of a medical team on the front line, and is deliberately reminiscent of World War One.
Back in the First World War, a young doctor by the name of Charles McMoran Wilson served in the trenches. He was one of the first doctors to recognize that shell shock (what we would call PTSD) was not an act of cowardice but rather an injury of the mind that is every bit as real as an injury to the body. Charles compiled his experiences in a non-fiction book called The Anatomy of Courage, but it has been out-of-print for several decades now. Having lost a great-grandfather in that war, I was fascinated to read his accounts from the trenches and wanted to honor some of his findings in this novel. Charles went on to become Lord Moran and, during the Second World War, became Winston Churchill's personal physician.
If you're looking for an insightful book about the nature of war and how First Contact can go horribly wrong, check out The Anatomy of Courage.
