ECHOES BETWEEN WARS • BOOK 1

Foxholes in Flanders

By Leo Vescari

In the mud and blood of the Western Front, two men find that the most dangerous thing in No Man's Land isn't the enemy — it's the truth they've uncovered about each other.

Tom Bennett runs messages through hell. A Yorkshire courier hardened by months at the Flanders Front, he navigates the labyrinthine trenches with a rare, uncanny gift: he can read artillery flashes like scripture, translating destruction's rhythm into intelligence that saves lives. But no skill can quiet the grief he carries for the friend he watched die slowly through a periscope, or still the tremor in his hands that reminds him how long he's been surviving without truly living.

Father Jules Deschamps is a man of God who no longer believes in God. When a wave of mustard gas casualties floods the field hospital, the French chaplain flees the receiving tent — undone not by cowardice, but by the shattering realization that his prayers are empty. In the shadows of an abandoned dug-out behind the supply lines, two broken men find each other, and begin stealing hours of brutal honesty from a war that is consuming everything else.

Then Tom surfaces from a forward listening post carrying terrible knowledge: the German high command has ordered the execution of their own shell-shocked war dogs — veterans who carried messages through machine-gun fire and found the wounded in No Man's Land. What begins as whispered outrage becomes a conspiracy, a rescue mission that will require wire cutters, forged documents, stolen morphine, and a crawl across a minefield in the dark, with a sniper hunting them every step of the way.

With dawn approaching and the killing ground between them and safety, Tom and Jules must reckon with what they've built in the dark — and whether love forged under fire can survive the unbearable weight of daylight.

A slow-burn, found-family historical MM romance set in WWI, featuring forced proximity, a crisis of faith, and two men who choose mercy when the world demands only sacrifice.