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Plot overview

Nineteen-year-old Canadian Robert Ross tries to escape both his grief over his sister's death and the social norms of oppressive upper-class society by enlisting in World War One. He is quickly drawn into the madness of war and commits "a last desperate act to declare his commitment to life in the midst of death."^[1] Years later, a historian tries to piece together how he came to commit this act using a mixture of styles and sources.