Merriam Press Historical Fiction 3. First Edition (March 2012). A war and spy novel as well as a mystery and a bildungsroman, this is the story of a poet recruited in the spring of 1943 to write poetry for coding and decoding messages in OSS, an intelligence agency. Jake Finny, a college senior in the reserves, believes he is escaping combat only to find to find himself dealing with a series of unexplained deaths in the Message Center. As he moves from Washington to Algiers to Italy, he fears for his life. He loses his best friend. He goes AWOL and seeks those committing these crimes aided by the Italian girl his friend wanted to marry. As the pressure on him intensifies, he is haunted by the head of Counterintelligence, a famous poet whom he can't determine whether he is sympathetic to him or thinks he is implicated in these deaths. He has talked to him about the connection between poetry and counterintelligence and only later realizes to his sorrow what an important part the man has played in his life. The novel is not only about Jake and his situation but also about the workings of OSS and the conditions in Italy during the war.