The Room of Lost Steps

Tolkien brings the duology that began with The Palace at the End of the Sea to a close with this stirring novel of an American antifascist fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Theo Sterling, an American student at Oxford, spent part of his adolescence in an Andalusian village, where he fell in love with the beautiful Maria, who grew up to become an ardent anarchist. In 1936, the star-crossed lovers reunite in Barcelona as the city erupts in violence. Persuaded by Maria, as well as his track coach and an old schoolmate, both of whom are Communists, Theo joins the fight against Franco with other American volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. His ideals are sorely tested: he and his comrades are given next to no training, provided with outmoded weapons, and routinely failed by their vain, power-hungry leaders. Tolkien’s minute-by-minute accounts of the battles of Jarama and Brunete unfold in harrowing and intimate detail, and his fluid prose captures the conflict’s assorted ideologies and alliances while crafting a very human story of soul-searching and struggle. The result is a vivid and painstakingly researched portrait of the war. (Sept.)