War Hero and A Boy

This unique novel tells the story of a solider of the First World War returning home to his fiance, she desperate for marriage, he knowing the family they both wanted was no longer possible. He found a degree of consolation in his friendship with a boy whose initial interest was not so much in the former soldier as his hobbies - bee keeping, gardening and chickens. Slowly the boy realized there was something mysterious about his hero, so mysterious it took him some years to discover precisely what it was. You will find plenty to cheer you in this book, a developing innocent friendship, at times evoking a few tears, but above all evidence of simple goodness between the old and the young. The author was for twenty-five years a Salvation Army officer until 1946 when he wrote a book Secular Evangelism, and refused to allow it to be censored. The result was his dismissal. This is his twelfth book, and second novel. A family man, he has fifteen grandchildren and eleven great grandchildren. His wife died a little more than a year ago after their sixty-eight years of marriage.
 
This unique novel tells the story of a solider of the First World War returning home to his fiance, she desperate for marriage, he knowing the family they both wanted was no longer possible. He found a degree of consolation in his friendship with a boy whose initial interest was not so much in the former soldier as his hobbies - bee keeping, gardening and chickens. Slowly the boy realized there was something mysterious about his hero, so mysterious it took him some years to discover precisely what it was. You will find plenty to cheer you in this book, a developing innocent friendship, at times evoking a few tears, but above all evidence of simple goodness between the old and the young. The author was for twenty-five years a Salvation Army officer until 1946 when he wrote a book Secular Evangelism, and refused to allow it to be censored. The result was his dismissal. This is his twelfth book, and second novel. A family man, he has fifteen grandchildren and eleven great grandchildren. His wife died a little more than a year ago after their sixty-eight years of marriage.