First published in 1923, Through the Wheat is Thomas Boyd's stark and unadorned novel of American soldiers in the First World War.
Drawing upon his own service in the U.S. Marine Corps, Boyd follows Private William Hicks from training camp to the trenches of France. The novel traces not heroics but attrition-physical exhaustion, disillusionment, fear, and the grinding erosion of youthful idealism. Battles are rendered without ornament; courage appears beside confusion; and survival carries no triumphal flourish.
Unlike romanticized war narratives, Through the Wheat presents combat as lived experience rather than patriotic spectacle. Boyd's restrained prose and psychological realism align the novel with the emerging modernist literature of the 1920s, anticipating later works that questioned the moral rhetoric of war. Published only a few years after the Armistice, it stands as one of the earliest American fictional accounts to confront the war's human cost directly.
This Wilder Publications edition presents the complete, unabridged 1923 text, preserving Boyd's unflinching portrayal of the American experience in the Great War.
We publiceren alleen reviews die voldoen aan de voorwaarden voor reviews. Bekijk onze voorwaarden voor reviews.