Olive Branch: A Novel, Olive Branch: A Novel

“The novel is fast-paced—jumping right into the action—and Schulze is a fine writer who imbues his characters with emotional depth while effectively incorporating the war’s historical events.” — BlueInk ReviewsParis, 1941. William Gunnison, a British Private trying to keep a low profile in Nazi-occupied France, accidentally kills an old American man he mistakes for a German officer. The old man’s butler Jacques, now alone in Paris with a secret the Nazis could kill him for, begs William to help him safely escape Paris. All he has to do is deliver Jacques’s letter of instructions to a man named Victor hiding in New York City, a letter he will refuse unless William uses the password: “Olive Branch.”Desperate to redeem himself for killing the old American — among other things — William agrees to desert the British army at the height of World War II and deliver the letter that saves Jacques’s life… but what William assumed to be a simple journey from Paris to New York proves to be anything but, forcing the young Private to outmanoeuvre not just the Nazis and Allied forces, but ghosts of his past as well.Utilizing David Schulze’s trademark brand of complex characters, busted genre tropes, and mile-a-minute plot twists, OLIVE BRANCH is a unique wartime mystery combining suspense, contemplation and tragedy, exploring themes of messy ethics, the limitations of the human spirit, and mankind’s life-or-death need for companionship.