Rommel and the Rebel
ROMMEL AND THE REBEL is a military adventure about the legend that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel toured American civil war battlefields before WWII. In 1937, Rommel, then a Wehrmacht infantry colonel, visits the battlefield park at Brice's Crossroads in Mississippi to study the tactics of Confederate cavalry general Nathan B. Forrest. Rommel's guide and interpreter is a U.S. Army lieutenant of German descent, Lt. Max Speigner. In 1941, when Rommel's panzers are pounding the British army in North...
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ROMMEL AND THE REBEL is a military adventure about the legend that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel toured American civil war battlefields before WWII. In 1937, Rommel, then a Wehrmacht infantry colonel, visits the battlefield park at Brice's Crossroads in Mississippi to study the tactics of Confederate cavalry general Nathan B. Forrest. Rommel's guide and interpreter is a U.S. Army lieutenant of German descent, Lt. Max Speigner. In 1941, when Rommel's panzers are pounding the British army in North Africa, Speigner is attached to the British military intelligence. He recognizes maneuvers inspired by Forrest and launches a desperate duel of wits with the Desert Fox.Publishers WeeklyIn 1937, a group of German officers toured Civil War battlefields. What if one of them was Erwin Rommel? And what if he was obsessed with rebel Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, unorthodox but successful cavalry leader? German-speaking U.S. Army Intelligence Lt. Max Speigner is sent to Oxford, Miss., as liaison. He becomes friendly with Rommel because of their mutual regard for Forrest. When the British later find his memo on Rommel's tactics (borne out in the blitzkrieg), they call Max to Cairo in late 1941 to help in ``divining'' Rommel's plans. The former friends eventually meet again, struggling as enemies. Part of the book is silly (Rommel in New York at a ballgame), part is very unlikely (Rommel on a drunken, midnight tour of Shiloh with ``Bill Faulkner'') and part is overblown (fanciful flashbacks to Forrest's behavior in battle). But there's real excitement, especially in the scenes of Rommel's drive on Benghazi and a good depiction of the ``Desert Fox'' as the ``respectable'' German warrior. First novelist Wells runs the Yoknapatawpha Press in Oxford, Miss. February 7
\ Publishers Weekly\ - Publisher's Weekly\ In 1937, a group of German officers toured Civil War battlefields. What if one of them was Erwin Rommel? And what if he was obsessed with rebel Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, unorthodox but successful cavalry leader? German-speaking U.S. Army Intelligence Lt. Max Speigner is sent to Oxford, Miss., as liaison. He becomes friendly with Rommel because of their mutual regard for Forrest. When the British later find his memo on Rommel's tactics (borne out in the blitzkrieg), they call Max to Cairo in late 1941 to help in ``divining'' Rommel's plans. The former friends eventually meet again, struggling as enemies. Part of the book is silly (Rommel in New York at a ballgame), part is very unlikely (Rommel on a drunken, midnight tour of Shiloh with ``Bill Faulkner'') and part is overblown (fanciful flashbacks to Forrest's behavior in battle). But there's real excitement, especially in the scenes of Rommel's drive on Benghazi and a good depiction of the ``Desert Fox'' as the ``respectable'' German warrior. First novelist Wells runs the Yoknapatawpha Press in Oxford, Miss. February 7\ \ \ \ \ John H. The Washington Times MagazineWonderful stuff...the excellence of the book as a whole signals the arrival of a major talent...one of the literary events of the season, a debut that coul not have been carried off with more finesse.\ \ \ The National ReviewLawrence Wells, taking off from a 1937 newspaper clipping about a visit by five German military dignitaries to Mississippi and the battlefield of Brices Crossroads, improves on history by supposing that Erwin Rommel, incognito, was one of the five....Rommel's audacity and poise, his uncanny Finger-spitzengefuhl, seemed familiar from the story of another great soldier, the Confederate cavalryman, Nathan Bedford Forrest....Rommel and the Rebel is not only highly imaginative but also deeply imagined, rich with color, humor, exotic atmosphere, and elective affinities. It is also distinguished for its strong hold on strength itself, for its sense of 'the other' without which the sense of self turns mushy. And it pictures with utterly idiomatic authority a great novelist--Faulkner, who was keenly aware of Nathan Bedford Forrest.\ \
