An assassin born of death and violation is the most dangerous of all. Cold Lonely Courage tells her story.
The action begins during the German Blitzkrieg attack on France in the opening days of World War II. The heroine, Madeleine Toche races to the front to find her brother dying after his unit is destroyed as the Germans advance. Crushed, Madeleine returns his body to her parents.
In the months that follow, Madeleine is raped by a Nazi officer. Seeking revenge she kills him and flees to England to volunteer for duty with Britain's shadowy Special Operations Executive. Trained as an assassin she clandestinely returns to France with Captain Jack Teach a veteran of the SOE 'Dirty Tricks Department'. They find themselves in love but are torn apart by duty and the insurmountable odds of survival. Madeleine fights on terrorizing the murderous Nazi elite always only one step ahead of capture and torture.
Madeleine's story is raw and driven. There are no detours. I engage the base emotions of my readers. I want them to live the characters the way I did when I wrote them. This is not an ordinary World War II novel. Cold Lonely Courage tells the brutal truth about the violence people are capable of when called upon to defend themselves and their families. The courage of women in war is marginalized and given subordinate consideration in popular fiction. Many women don't read novels about war because of it. Cold Lonely Courage changes that.
Cold Lonely Courage has broad appeal to men and women of all ages. Madeleine's character will be revisited in subsequent novels as her skills and sense of justice are called upon as the world changes and the fans of her exploits continue to grow. My first novel, The Patience County War was edited by Redbird Studios in Milwaukee Wisconsin. I am now doing my 'rewrite' and hope to have Patience on the market soon. Madeleine is revisited when she is in her 70's as dangerous as ever. I have a third novel in the works,where Madeleine takes on the PLO in the Middle East at the time of the Yom Kippur war in the 1970's. Her character is great fun to write and read. I couldn't have asked for a better character.
