Fiction

Red Sable – About the Book

Having been a publisher for over 30 years this is Meuryn Hughes’s first work of fiction following the story of Will Trevethan, a young Cornishman with the world at his feet. An accomplished artist with great prospects, a beautiful and intelligent girlfriend at his side, he could want for nothing.

It is 1950, the dawning of a new decade, and a new found confidence after the privations and suffering of the Second World War. Yet, on the horizon another war is looming and following the National Service Act of 1948 Wil is enlisted for National Service.

Following his training he is shipped off with thousands of young men to the jungles of Korea to fight a war he does not understand. Lacking in preparation and equipment, he is completely unprepared for war. During one firefight he is taken prisoner by the enemy. He and his fellow prisoners suffer appalling torture, starvation and death, at the hands of their captors in POW camps north of Korea. After many months, he makes a dramatic escape and makes his way back from enemy territory to safety.

In 1953 the war ends and Will returns to a different Britain, a country that does not care for war and suffering, but is focussed on the coronation of the new young Queen Elizabeth, the conquering of Everest, and new found wealth and consumerism. Korea is the forgotten war.

Devastated at learning that Sal, his sweetheart, has married, whilst he was missing in action in Korea, Will has a breakdown and is admitted to a secure hospital, and there he remains until a visiting American doctor specialising in post traumatic stress disorders in soldiers begins the process of healing and rebuilding Will.

Can he ever reconcile his loss of the love of his life? And can he rebuild his love for life and his art?

Red Sable is a story of love, loss and redemption, and brings in to sharp focus the effects of conscripting young men and sending them to war to distant countries, in the name of democracy.