A sickly child at birth, at the age of eight Dexter Hand was diagnosed with TB. This required a lengthy stay in a sanitorium, which saved his life. But the ravages of the complaint did not go away. They remained to haunt his life. He participated in all the sports and although he had the instincts for the games, he did not have the capacity.
He lived normally when he could and adopted excuses when he couldn’t. He worked as a technical author for a good part of his adult life. So elaborate was his world of deception, excusing himself over his lung condition, that a deflection to romantic writing was an obvious recourse. He could be someone else if needs be. The characters he portrays here are all him. The covert world of secret illness, and its unsuspected torments, has its day here too.
While the First World War is regularly depicted by the nature of its horror, it was also a period whereby the excitement of inventions and the suggestion of an exciting time to come churned up the aspirations of some. Add to this the imagining of a treasure hunt in an exotic location and the excitem...
