davidclensy.com

Prayer in Time of War, my debut novel, is now available!

It tells the story of elderly war veteran Ernie as he returns to an Italy transformed from his experiences during the Second World War, in search of the girl he left behind in the back streets of Naples half a century before.

I have put in a great deal of work over the past few years to bringing Ernie and Preghiera to life on the page, so am thrilled today to see it finally available to buy in both paperback and Kindle formats.

The novel tells a story of love in a world without room for romance. By the winter of 1943, the city of Naples had become nothing short of a hell on Earth. Food, happiness and hope were scarce; poverty, misery and desolation were plentiful. For the British Army, the squalor of the Neapolitan suburbs came as a shock. For Private Ernest Green, at just 22, it feels like another world. He finds himself alone in a nightmare landscape, until he catches the gaze of Preghiera. Both Ernest and Preghiera see in each other the hope of happiness. But they live in a world that seems set on keeping them apart.

At its heart, I wanted the novel to ask a simple question – can young love survive a lifetime apart? Could the spark still be there after 50 years?

Just as love can last a lifetime, so too can heartache. For fifty years Ernie dreams of returning, to take the hand of the true love of his life. Even as a gloomy widower, facing the ravages of old age, he is determined nothing will stop him from being with Preghiera at the last. The novel is told through three intermingling timeline strands, which combine powerfully to tell a complete story of Ernie’s life through the prism of his relationships, set amid the backdrop of his wartime struggles.

I first began to research the period of occupation in Naples to get a better understanding of my late grandfather’s experiences during the Second World War. Inspired by his recollection of a fellow soldier who fell in love with a Neapolitan girl during the occupation, the fictional story of Ernest and Preghiera began to take shape.

I do hope you’ll read it and enjoy it. In a world where thousands of new books are published each week, reviews are super-important for authors. So if you do read it and enjoy it, do please take a moment to review it on Amazon or Goodreads and play your part in telling the world about its existence! You can order your copy here.

But for now, drum-roll please, here is the launch trailer for the novel: