Long and Short Reviews welcomes James MacManus, the author of the recently released Ike and Kate. Leave a comment or ask the author a question for a chance to win one of five copies of the book (contest closes June 4 – US/Canada only).

The sweeping love story at the heart of the Second World War, vividly reimagining General Eisenhower and Kate Summersby’s infamous, star-crossed affair

In his latest historical novel Ike and Kay, acclaimed author James MacManus brings to life an unbelievably true and controversial romance and the poignant characters and personalities that shaped the course of world history.

In 1942, Kay Summersby’s life is changed forever when she is conscripted to drive General Eisenhower on his fact-finding visit to wartime London. Despite Eisenhower’s marriage to Mamie, the pair takes an immediate liking to each other and he buys Kay a rare wartime luxury: a box of chocolates.

So begins a tumultuous relationship that, against all military regulation, sees Kay traveling with Eisenhower on missions to far-flung places before the final assault on Nazi Germany. The general does dangerously little to conceal his affair with the woman widely known as “Ike’s shadow,” and in letters Mamie bemoans his new obsession with “Ireland.” That does not stop him from using his influence to grant Kay citizenship and rank in the US army, drawing her closer still when he returns to America. When officials discover Eisenhower’s plans to divorce from his wife they threaten the fragile but passionate affair, and Kay is forced to take desperate measures to hold onto the man she loves . . .

Based on the scandalous true story of General Eisenhower’s secret World War II love affair, Ike and Kay is a compelling story of love, duty, sacrifice, and heartbreak, set against the backdrop of the most tumultuous period of the twentieth century.

Enjoy an Excerpt

So Marshall thought Eisenhower was having an affair with her and couldn’t bring himself to say so? Well, he wasn’t. All right, he had kissed her. Plenty of times in fact. And he had held her close, feeling her body against his. Back in Kansas when he was young his parents would have called that making love.

But that was then. Now a kiss was just a kiss. It wasn’t an affair. Did he want to have an affair with her? Hell, yes – who wouldn’t? She was more than just an attractive woman. She meant a great deal to him. But he was a soldier. He knew his duty. And George Marshall should know his. Which was to leave him to get on with this war and stop worrying about what the gossips back home were saying.
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Eisenhower told himself that was a sensible and logical reaction to an out of line intrusion into the way he ran the war. But there was another small voice which told him that Marshall might have had a point. He had feelings for Kay Summersby, he could hardly deny that.

They had kissed and would kiss again. The taste of her lips and the scent of her forbidden perfume lingered like a long sunset. Kay and her perfume were supposed to be against the rules, beyond reach. Maybe that was why he wanted her so much.

Or maybe it was the war. The casualty reports crossed his desk every morning. He dreaded those documents. The dead were not just numbers on paper. He had seen their bodies in the field, young men with bodies ripped open, their entrails spilling onto the earth, others gazing sightlessly at the sky without a mark on them but very dead.

He had seen men die in the forward nursing stations, some while they struggled to speak to him or shake his hand. No man could look on such sights without silent shame, rage and the fearful knowledge that there were many more deaths to come.
That is why he needed her, to help him escape, even for moments, from the battle orders and the death and destruction that followed.

Excerpted from Ike and Kay by James MacManus. Copyright © 2018 by James MacManus. Published by arrangement with The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

About the Author: James MacManus is the managing director of The Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of six novels, including the historical novels Black Venus, Sleep in Peace Tonight, and Midnight in Berlin.

Buy the book at Amazon.