Alan Williams

The Man Who Found Treasure Alan Williams

Three nations at war. Three forgotten armies. Three Kingdoms trying to make sense of a world in turmoil. For farm wagoner Bert Kingdom life is sweet - a pretty wife, a new family, and prospects on the up beneath the intense glow of a perfect English summer. And then the war came. Instead of domestic bliss, he arms himself with the promise longed-for reunions with Alice and his baby son. This is the ammunition he knows he must carry if he has any chance of surviving the murderous futility of Gallipoli. Twenty-five years later - and under the lingering shadow of his father - Walter Kingdom is experiencing a doubt-ridden and grisly foreign war of his own. In the steamy forests of Burma, a startling coincidence provides an unexpected chance to discover the missing pieces of the jigsaw relating to his family's past. Little does he know that it is the dawn of a journey that will last the remainder of his life, on the elusive trail of Johnson, the only man who knows the truth. Alice Kingdom is also fighting on the frontline. Her war in Nottingham is just as brutal and bloody as anything her husband and son will experience, but she is battling more personal demons too. It must fall to Walter, and the answers he seeks, to exorcise the ghosts that haunt her and to attempt to bring the three Kingdoms back together once again. The man who found treasure is historical fiction with a literary edge. It is a heart-in-your-mouth story of loss and lost time, of re-discovery and the survival instinct. It is a diorama cut across decades, revealing the tumultuous impact of war on one family - a war that leaves no peace behind.