13 Comments
Aug 27, 2023Liked by Jane Ratcliffe

WOW! So beautifully written, and so compelling! I look forward to reading your novel in its entirety when it’s available...thank you for sharing this excerpt! My father was a freshly graduated electrical engineer drafted into the US Army to work at Los Alamos in 1942. It was an experience he never discussed and the nuances of which I didn’t know enough to ask about before he passed away in 2010. Thank you for writing about this so very poignant topic.

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Aug 25, 2023Liked by Jane Ratcliffe

Oh my gosh. The writing!! I so look forward to the day that I can snatch this off the shelf at a bookstore. Fingers crossed it'll be soon and thanks, Jane, for sharing such precious work.

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Aug 24, 2023Liked by Jane Ratcliffe

Jane, the images here are so vivid and detailed! I love how naturally the dialogues flow from each character. I really feel like I'm there with them, experiencing these brutalities but also living the nuances. It's such an enormous undertaking to take on these kinds of stories but you do it so deftly. Brava, my friend! Sending all my best wishes that you find the perfect person to represent your novel!

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there can never be enough words to honour these tragic courageous victims of historic violent human nature and yours appear lucid and focussed and bound by love

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Haven’t read the whole excerpt yet, but what I have read has been fascinating. Bertrand Russell is the man to read about the peace movement, I think. Good luck with the rest of this work!

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Aug 25, 2023Liked by Jane Ratcliffe

So compelling, Jane. You find the precious, pulsing humanity amid the terror and brutality...I can't wait to read it all. My American grandfather was just a clerk during the war. He never saw combat, that I know of. But the Depression impacted his psyche as it did so many who lived through it. Even my dad inherited his father's scarcity mindset.

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