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Beware the Tentacles of Darkness

by John A. Goodes

502 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #08-0305; ISBN 1-4251-7300-4; US$33.00, C$33.00, EUR22.54, £17.04

Three generations of a family from occupied Poland are embroiled in a series of circumstances which involve family separations, a daring escape, emigration, arms development, espionage, racism and assassinations.

About the Book

Beginning in 1900, three generations of an ordinary family living in occupied Poland inadvertently become embroiled in a world of geopolitical intrigue, leading to a daring escape, emigration to Canada and the USA, involvement in the arms development business and military espionage.

Taken from his parents as a young boy in occupied Poland, Erik Berglund is schooled by the Prussian state for ten years and develops a talent for arms design. Soon he finds himself pulled by circumstances and faced with difficult choices arising from his conflicting allegiances to his Prussian benefactors and his family homeland. Persuaded by an influential family member and Polish patriot, Erik comes up with a perfect plan for escape. In Toledo he starts a family and continues his innovations in weapons design. But even this land of new opportunities cannot help him evade the powers of the dark tides.

Years later, Erik's son Walter has grown up into a young man on his uncle's homestead in Manitoba, Canada. As Walter tries to piece together the mystery of his parents' deaths, he is drawn away from his pastoral life as a farm boy and transformed into a top-notch spy. As an undercover operative in pre-WWII Germany and Poland, he finds himself deep in the dangerous waters of Nazi Germany's illegal rearmament and its ugly anti-Semetic agenda. Driven by a passion for revenge, Walter lands in some very tight situations which he escapes only with the support of a trustworthy ally. But in the end, like his father, Walter is alone to deal with his entangled political and personal identity, and the age-old hostilities, prejudices and intolerances that he and the rest of the world have inherited.

About the Author

John A. Goodes is retired and lives in the Canadian prairies. As a young man he worked as a newspaper reporter, writer and editor of a professional journal. Later he was employed as a public servant. He is currently involved in volunteer projects aimed at preserving the history of ethnic communities in the prairie region. In 2003 he published Where Money Grows on Trees, a history of a unique Romanian pioneer community in Manitoba. This is his first work of fiction.