No Man's Land

London, 1910: young Adam Raine’s impoverished childhood becomes even darker when his mother is killed in a workers’ protest march. His grieving father, Daniel, seeks a second chance for them in a coal mining town, where he begins working for the miners’ union. But tensions escalate between the miners and their employer, Sir John Scarsdale, and finally explode with tragic consequences.
 
In the aftermath, Adam is brought into the opulent Scarsdale family home where Sir John’s son subjects Adam to a succession of petty cruelties for daring to step above his station. When, despite everything, Adam finds love with the beautiful parson’s daughter and wins a scholarship to Oxford, he starts to feel that his life is finally coming together—until the outbreak of war threatens to tear everything apart. Inspired by the real-life war experiences of the author’s grandfather J.R.R. Tolkien, No Man’s Land delivers a Dickensian, page-turning novel of Edwardian England and World War I.

Simon Tolkien studied modern history at Trinity College, Oxford, and went on to become a London barrister specializing in criminal defense. He is the author of Final Witness and The Inheritance, court­room dramas drawing on his firsthand knowledge of the British criminal justice system, and The King of Diamonds and Orders from Berlin, set during World War II. Simon is the grandson of J. R. R. Tolkien and is a director of the Tolkien Estate. He lives with his wife and two children in Southern California.

www.simontolkien.com