The Long Road Back

About the Book

This story has its beginning in a previous novel, “Trail of Dreams”, also written by Paul R. Cleveland. Three vibrant young men barnstormed their way from the shores of Lake Erie to the coast of southern Florida blazing a trail of romance and adventure. In the closing pages of that novel, one member of the barnstorming trio, Lyle Rowe, gained acceptance into Air Forces flight training. He also won the heart and hand of a beautiful girl with sparkling eyes and a devastating smile. In this extension of the story, titled “The Long Road Back”, Lyle Rowe has just experienced two heart-rending set backs that have rearranged his entire life within a period of several months. First, his beautiful fiancée was killed in an automobile accident. Unable to cope with her untimely death, he lost concentration in his military flying training and was eliminated from the air forces flying training program. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor propels Lyle back into the Air Forces as a trained weather observer. He is quickly identified for overseas service and is shipped to England. New friends and new places do little to improve Lyle’s melancholy mood until one evening he is introduced to a lovely and caring English girl, Chrystene White. During the ensuing weeks, Lyle and Chrystie meet with increasing frequency at a delightful, live-music dance pavilion along the North Sea coast. Lyle’s interest in Chrystie grows and his outlook on life takes a gradual turn for the better. Friendly meetings for dinner and dancing evolve rapidly to evenings to be anticipated with twilight strolls along the seacoast and frequent open displays of affection. As Lyle’s growing interest in Chrystie turns to genuine love, his happiness is again shattered by a twist of fate. His new love disappears overnight. Lyle searches for Chrystie and is finally told that she has been accused of being unpatriotic to the allied cause and is being detained at an undisclosed place. While Lyle continues to seek more information about Chrystie’s arrest and her whereabouts, he is permitted to make a bombing mission over Germany as a weather observer. The B-17E in which Lyle is flying is hit by ground fire while flying low over its target of Cologne. With an out of control fire raging in the bomb bay and a wing tip shot off by German fighter aircraft attacks, the ship’s Captain orders all on board to abandon the flying fortress. One of the last to leave the doomed aircraft, Lyle finds himself descending alone into enemy territory. On the ground, he moves on foot and is able to avoid detection until he discovers an unused cabin beside a stream in a wooded area. Unable to move eastward toward the seacoast, he decides to hole-up in the cabin while he tries to determine his next best moves. While he ponders his fate, Lyle is taken prisoner at gunpoint by a German who turns out to be a friend, Rolf Keesler, whom Lyle had known several years earlier in the United States. Although originally sympathetic to the German cause, Rolf is now disillusioned with Adolph Hitler and the German Third Reich. He is willing to help Lyle escape from Germany into Belgium or The Netherlands both of which are occupied by German Forces, but which also support extensive anti-German underground movements. Rolf sets about to develop a plan for Lyle’s escape. He takes Lyle to the home of his mother in Duren. The German Gestapo hunts relentlessly for the American airmen who parachuted into Germany from Lyle’s disabled B-17E. As the Gestapo closes in on Rolf’s mother’s home, Lyle is moved on foot to the home of two German ladies, Elsie and Katerina Mohler, who are also part of a growing group now willing to help downed allied airmen to escape from Germany. Lyle spends several weeks in hiding at the Mohler home, while Rolf works feverishly to complete a plan to move Lyle across Germany to the coastal lowlands. Elsie and Kat are able to provide food and new clothing for Lyle and a great frie

About the Author

Paul R. Cleveland was born and grew up in the small rural village of Clyde, Ohio. He now divides his time between Sandusky, Ohio, and The Villages, Florida. After a thirty-year career as a physical scientist, he wrote his first novel at the age of eighty. His first story, “Trail of Dreams”, was based on a real-life airplane-barnstorming experience. The second novel, “The Long Road Back”, extended his first story, fictionally, and resulted in a tense, World War II, romantic escape adventure. His latest work, “A Diamond in the Rough”, is the third in the author’s continuing series of romantic adventure novels. It is a moving, sentimental love story that readers will thoroughly enjoy.