John Nadler's A Perfect Hell: The True Story of the Black Devils, the Forefathers of the Special Forces, is due out in paperback in March.Last year the novelist Olen Steinhauer asked John five questions about his writing, including:
Your previous book, Searching for Sofia, deals with the Kosovo War in the late nineties. As a war correspondent during that time it makes sense that you’d tell this story. What brought you back in time to the story of the First Special Service Force in A Perfect Hell?Read the entire Q & A.
I always wanted to write a WWII book mainly because my parents were of that generation. They spoke of the war a lot when I was growing up, and over time I felt somehow connected to that epoch. My mom talked about the war years more than my dad. She of course spoke of watching the boys leave for Europe and the Pacific, and the helplessness and fear of waiting on the home front. This is one element I tried to inject in A Perfect Hell: showing the connection between the men on the frontline and the families at home. One thing I learned was that nothing on a battlefield happens in isolation. Every casualty reverberates somewhere else: creating grief, changing lives, sometimes destroying lives. As much as anything, the book helped me to come to terms with the legacy of the WWII generation, now that this generation is disappearing.
John put A Perfect Hell to the Page 69 Test over at the Campaign for the American Reader.
--Marshal Zeringue