1915: Ben Retallick is asked by a War Office friend to provide two traction engines for a secret expedition attempting to take two gunboats overland from Cape Town to Lake Tanganyika
- more than 3 000 miles
- to wrest control of the lake from the Germans. He sends engines with young Ruddlemoor as the driver who meets a Portuguese East African nurse & takes her side against a group of white racist south Africans. Meanwhile Antonia St Anna is influential in having Ben released when he is arrested on circumstantial evidence provided by a business rival & accused of being pro-German. In Brothers in War E. V. Thompson returns to his acclaimed Retallick saga immersing the family in the upheaval of the First World War & through them creating a captivating tale of love & war loyalty & betrayal loss & adventure that weaves its way from Cornwall to the uncharted territory of the depths of Africa
- & an eventful conclusion in Cornwall once more.