Wayfaring Stranger: A Novel (A Holland Family Novel)

"From "America's best novelist" (The Denver Post): A sprawling thriller drenched with atmosphere and intrigue that takes a young boy from a chance encounter with Bonnie and Clyde to the trenches of World War II and the oil fields along the Texas-Louisiana coast. It is 1934 and the Depression is bearing down when sixteen-year-old Weldon Avery Holland happens upon infamous criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow after one of their notorious armed robberies. A confrontation with the outlaws ends as Weldon puts a bullet through the rear window of Clyde's stolen automobile. Ten years later, Second Lieutenant Weldon Holland and his sergeant, Hershel Pine, escape certain death in the Battle of the Bulge and encounter a beautiful young woman named Rosita Lowenstein hiding in a deserted extermination camp. Eventually, Weldon and Rosita fall in love and marry and, with Hershel, return to Texas to seek their fortunes. There, they enter the domain of jackals known as the oil business. They meet Roy Wiseheart--a former Marine aviator haunted with guilt for deserting his squadron leader over the South Pacific--and Roy's wife Clara, a vicious anti-Semite who is determined to make Weldon and Rosita's life a nightmare. It will be the frontier justice upheld by Weldon's grandfather, Texas lawman Hackberry Holland, and the legendary antics of Bonnie and Clyde that shape Weldon's plans for saving his family from the evil forces that lurk in peacetime America and threaten to destroy them all"-- "WAYFARING STRANGER begins in West Texas in 1934. At age sixteen, Weldon Holland encounters Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker traveling with their accomplices after having just pulled off one of their notorious armed robberies. Weldon is smitten by Bonnie, but because of Clyde and Bonnie's duplicity and the disrespect they show his grandfather, Weldon ends up putting a bullet through the rear window of Clyde's stolen automobile. The story then jumps to 1944 and the Ardennes Forest and the Battle of the Bulge, where Second Lieutenant Weldon Holland saves his sergeant, Hershel Pine, from death by suffocation when he is buried alive in his foxhole under the treads of a Waffen SS Tiger tank. Weldon and Hershel survive the executions of the wounded by the SS and escape on a freight train deep into Nazi Germany. There, they stumble into an extermination camp deserted by the SS, and discover among the stacked bodies a young woman named Rosita Lowenstein, who is not only a remarkable woman but a relative of Rosa Luxemburg (known as "Red Rosa," whose mother's name was Lowenstein). Eventually, Weldon will make her his bride, and the three friends will return to Texas to seek their fortunes. But when Weldon, Hershel, and Rosita form a pipeline corporation, they enter the domain of jackals known as the oil business. They meet Roy Wiseheart--one of the wealthiest men in Texas and a former Marine aviator haunted with guilt for deserting his squadron leader over the South Pacific--and Roy's wife Clara, a vicious anti-semite who is determined to make Weldon and Rosita's life a nightmare"--