"As Elcock's The Gate moves the reader closer and closer to the German breakout and the start of the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, my heart rate quickened. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. Nothing else mattered but knowing what Elcock had discovered in his research of this epic chapter of the war." ---Ted Barris, from the Foreword
"Brief vivid episodes, wonderfully alive, cumulate and layer, propelling this . . . story toward its inevitable, and surprising, end. The Gate catches the arbitrariness of inhumanity, and human resilience." ---Patrick Friesen
"Filled with intrigue and tension." ---Prairie Fire
"Bursting with colour . . . Elcock's war story is not primarily about place or the business of battlefields, but of human relationships." ---Focus Magazine
"Elcock's prose is blunt and direct, with flashes of poetic observation." ---Victoria Times Colonist
A settled life in mid-1980s Vancouver is turned upside down when Stephen Rochefort begins to learn more about the mother he never knew---and, a few weeks later in Belgium, about her French lover. The Gate travels back and forth through time, bringing Stephen's world into collision with the Battle of the Bulge in midwinter 1944. Stephen encounters hitherto unknown relatives in Belgium, and his voyage of discovery, hand-in-hand with the parents he'd never known, brings him into contact with Inge Martel, the veuve de pays boisé---the widow of the woodlands---as well as the wonderful Abbé Musty of the Church of St. Peter and the children of the seminary in the besieged market town of Bastogne, the fearsome SS officer Teufel, and the infamous Christmas Eve massacre of the young men of the village of Bande. True to the events of the time, from the details of the weather to American and German troop movements during the Battle of the Bulge, novelist and non-fiction writer Michael Elcock "has used onsite research, including first-hand accounts of the key historical events, to create a heartbreaking and suspenseful novel" (BC Bookworld).
This new edition of The Gate includes an afterword by the author as well as a foreword by Ted Barris, the acclaimed author of numerous books about World War II, including Battle of Britain: Canadian Airmen in their Finest Hour.
Michael Elock's previous books include Transactions with the Fallen, a short-story collection, and travel memoir A Perfectly Beautiful Place. Born in Scotland, he lives on Vancouver Island.