Brothers in War

1915. Ben Retallick is asked by a War Office friend to provide two traction engines for a secret expedition attempting to take two gunboats overland from Cape Town to Lake Tanganyika—more than 3,000 miles—to wrest control of the lake from the Germans. He sends engines with young Ruddlemoor as the driver/engineer who meets a Portuguese East African nurse and takes her side against a group of white racist south Africans. Meanwhile Antonia St. Anna is influential in having Ben released, when he is arrested on circumstantial evidence provided by a business rival and accused of being pro-German.

E. V. Thompson is the author of numerous historical novels, including Cassie, Fires of Evening, Ruddlemoor, Though the Heavens May Fall, and The Vagrant King.