Attack on the Sportplatz

From the author of Swift comes a new and suspenseful realistic novel of war, love, and survival during the attack on Sportplatz in Julich, Germany, the early part of December 1944. The book explores the highest levels of human intensity and experience: intense visceral combat; random and violent death; deep love and commitment; and remarkable and painful survival and recovery. Shearer describes the work as a secondary historical memoira retelling of the attack on an athletic complex as first narrated by his father and the men he commanded. The events described in Shearers book occurred during World War II near the wars end, prior to and just after December 1, 1944, and shortly before the Battle of Bulge. Military personnel, locations, battles, and sequences of events have not been altered for the sake of the narrative, and soldiers names, who were engaged in the battle, are accurate. However, Shearers use of subjective thoughts and conversations that offer transition and personalized contexts, though fictional, heighten the human element and remind us again of the horror of war and its effect upon human life.