Where the Souls of Men Are Calling

Published in 1918 as the United States entered the First World War, Credo Fitch Harris’s novel opens in the small American town of Hillsdale in the spring of 1917. Its hero, young Jeb Tumpson, is swept up in the rush to arms as the country mobilizes, and the story carries him from the home front to the firing line in France. Running through it is his romance with Marian Strong, a newspaper editor’s daughter who trains as a nurse and follows the fighting overseas herself. What lifts it above ordinary wartime romance is firsthand knowledge: Harris served with the Red Cross in France, and the battle scenes draw on things actually seen. Sentimental in the manner of its day, it records how everyday Americans understood the summons to war and the price of answering it.