This is the tale of Charles Marden, an apple grower and judge who sets off from his Vancouver Island home on an impulsive journey to Belgium, where his son, an Allied soldier in the First World War, has just died in battle at the very end of the war. Marden's single-minded mission: finding the exact spot where his son was killed.

Across western Canada the Spanish flu rages—the very disease that claimed Marden's wife three weeks earlier. Upon arriving in England, he learns that his son left behind a pregnant girlfriend. Soon his search widens to include locating the girl, too. Nearing the front lines, Marden seems to descend into the fires of hell as he navigates the mine-strewn killing fields of the trenches, still reeking with poison gas. Will he find the girl, and will he find an answer to the forces that drove him halfway around the world?

W. D. Wetherell's previous books include the novels Morning and Chekhov's Sister, the short story collections The Man Who Loved Levittown and Wherever That Great Heart May Be. He recently held the Strauss Living grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

A Century of November is being made into a movie. Visit the movie site at: http://acenturyofnovember.com.

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