The Stoker Trilogy, Book III - Acceptance | Austin Macauley Publishers

It is January 1940. Tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome, Charlie Stoker is loved by everyone. Seen by all as the man who has it all, he is tortured by the belief that he lives a lie, a double life. His religious upbringing and inborn sense of righteousness demand that he resolve his problem, but WWII intervenes. Charlie, Bobby, Harry Bateson, Billy Walters, and even mild Percy Spence vanish to serve their country.While Charlie completes his army training, Sally Spence gives birth to a beautiful daughter, Shirley, and Charlie becomes godfather to his own child. Then, the ‘phoney’ war explodes. The drama of Dunkirk is followed by the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. London is in chaos. The lives of all those associated with the Stokers are endangered by the constant threat of the never-ending air raids. With all the men absent, their families spend their nights in Anderson shelters or hiding behind black-out curtains. Somehow, stirred by Winston Churchill’s passionate speeches, they keep up their spirits and find a way for most to survive.Charlie becomes a commando officer, who endures some of the fiercest battles of the war in Europe. He is saved from near death by the French Resistance; then, later, he leads his men through the entire Italian Campaign. His experiences there teach him to see his problems in a different light. Is there, at last, a path to acceptance?

Tod Benjamin’s first novel was published in 2017 at the age of 81, after a long and varied life of three careers. Firstly, a five year management course led to five years as a department store manager. That was followed by twenty-five years in the chemical industry, a career that took him all over the world.

Retirement to Bournemouth to play golf and to write created the opportunity for his third career. He began to write seriously. Now, unable to play golf, he devotes most of his time to writing. With an amount of poetry, some short stories and three novels completed, Charles and Charlie, his second novel, is the first of The Stoker Trilogy. Book two, The Tallyman, continues this saga of the first half of the twentieth century through the 1930s, and the third volume, The Soldier, completes the story through World War 2 to 1950.