Unknown Soldiers was originally inspired by a trip I made to the First World War battlefields in Flanders when I was 16.
I didn’t want to write conventional war book, though – my most lasting impression was of the vast size of the cemeteries.
The book is about the aftermath of war, and it is also a love story and a ghost story dealing with how people recover.

Plot
The book is set in France three months after the fighting ended.
Ricard Villier is a French officer ordered to clear up part of the battlefield around the devastated village of Pericard.

He finds himself in a devastated world he doesn't understand, in which the living spend their lives dwelling on the dead.

He meets Celine, who has come to the Front to take her husband's body home.
As he becomes involved in her struggle to fulfil her husband's last wish, Ricard finds himself also drawn closer to the world of the dead, which is made up of thousands of unlived lives.

Research
It was difficult to research this novel because there are few historicial accounts of the effects and aftermath of the First World War.

Most of my information came from a few books, which often included first-hand accounts.
They ensured that the story had a firm historical background.

The returning ghosts of the dead, for example, were inspired by the battlefield “shrines” created by soldiers who called on their fallen comrades to protect them.

A writer's lot
Unknown Soldiers was my first novel, and when I started sending it to publishers, like most people I received many rejections.
From time to time, a rejection would contain useful advice and I consequently rewrote the book several times.

By the time I sent it to Vanguard Press, it was fit to print. I was ecstatic: all the work and emotion that had gone into it had been worth it.
Mark Leech

Unknown Soldiers is published by the Vanguard Press. See details and reviews