May, 1914
Paris

"Dearest Dorothy,

I have met them. I say them when I should mean him, for it is him. Alan Seeger, whom I have dared to seek, is in Paris. And he, unsuspecting that I harbored a secret hope of meeting him again, has never heard of me.

Do you recall my story of the night we first met, Seeger and I? It was at Mrs. Williams', during that spring trip to New York. She had invited the Greenwich poets and musicians and artists into her home to discuss the newest works of art and literature. I sat among the guests like a poor relative, too ashamed to speak. The Reeds and Eliots and Seegers of the old vanguard perched on Edwardian chairs and sipped from Victorian china. How I longed to speak with them, to be accepted into their casual acquaintance and so be named one of them."

So begins my newest novel, The Soldier Poet. While this story isn't part of my Donaghue Histories series, it is the one that started me on the road to writing historical fiction. 

I wrote The Soldier Poet as my Master's degree thesis in literature. I have always told myself that I would publish it on one of the centennials of WWI, when the story is set. I missed the centennial of the start of the war in 2014, but I am not missing the centennial for the end of the war. And so this book, this labor of passion and respect, will be released on Nov. 11, 2018 in ebook (which you can order now) and print. 

I have chosen to publish it under a different pen name for two reasons: to set it aside from my current, historical fiction and to give honor to the name my family has called me throughout my life coupled with the name I chose when I married into a new family. And so, Cari Reid it is. I also published my poetry (I started my writing life as a poet) under the same name, so it is even more fitting that I use it for a story centered on a poet. 

A little more about the book from the Afterward: I first encountered Alan Seeger in 1996. He was a one-sentence comment in Paul Fussell's The Great War and the Modern Memory. The comment centered on Seeger's best-known poem and not on the poet himself. One phrase in the sentence caught my attention: "best-known American poem of the war" (Fussell 158). It was the first time I had encountered a reference to an American poet who fought in WWI.

I hope you will take time to look it up. It is available for preorders now. While it is a fictional story, it is based entirely around true events and real Americans who lived and fought and sometimes died for France. It is also the story of a remarkable man, Alan Seeger, who even now inspires me to embrace who I am without apology.

Thank you for all your support as readers, and I promise, this December, book three of the Donaghue Series, The Lost Soldier, will be out. 

Happy reading!
C. Jane (Cari) Reid