Book Description

Men With Broken Faces is the story of a World War I soldier's fight for physical survival during combat, and of his struggle for spiritual survival afterward. The book follows Morgan Feeney from basic training in Montana to front-line combat in France, and back to Montana. Some of the sub-plots include Morgan's affliction with petit mal epilepsy; the death on the battlefield of a gay prizefighter's friend; Morgan's vision of his ideal love, Evangeline; Morgan's neurasthenia (shell shock); and worst of all, the suicide death of his friend, Lansing Rhodes, just before the end of the war. For the rest of his life Morgan is haunted by the war, by Lansing's war diary, and by Evangeline. After his release from the army, Morgan homesteads in northeastern Montana. Burdened by his epilepsy, and tormented by his war experiences, Morgan becomes an outcast; the object of gossip and ridicule. Morgan's one salvation is the incarnation of Evangeline: beautiful Genevieve Richards, who was a nurse in France during the war. Despite Morgan's suffering, Genevieve recognizes an innate courage and dignity within him. Genevieve herself is psychologically wounded. She and Morgan find themselves attracted to each other, but their relationship is not complete until they realize that one of the "men with broken faces"* whom Genevieve had tended is Lansing, who is still alive. Lansing-mad, and addicted to opium-has a psychogenic control over Genevieve that ends only when he sacrifices himself for her, and for Morgan. In the end, Morgan and Genevieve find peace together. * Those so hideously wounded that French artists were hired to make masks for them. James Ostby grew up on the barren High Plains of northeastern Montana, on the farm homesteaded by his grandparents in 1912. He holds a bachelor of science degree in general studies, a bachelor of science in film and television production, and a minor in history. He was a personnel psychology specialist in the Army in the mid '60s, has worked in public and commercial television, and was the owner and manager of a small-town radio station in Wyoming. He and his wife, Donna, returned to the farm with their two young daughters in 1977. The long, cold winters and the isolation provided the perfect writing environment. (Ironically, his hometown was named Froid by a railroad worker.) James and Donna spend their summers in Montana, and the rest of the year they cruise aboard their blue-water sailboat, Skycastles, based in Florida.