Broken Rainbows — Catrin Collier

The third novel in the Long Road to Baghdad series, a vivid, moving, historically accurate account of a conflict between Eastern and Western Empires. 1916, Mesopotamia. The Turks order prisoners from the siege of Kut to march the hundreds of miles to Baghdad. The men are weak from starvation after the five-month siege, with many suffering from dysentery and diseases. They have no medical supplies - and then the hot weather begins... Hundreds of men die on the march, the stragglers killed by Arab tribesmen; those too ill to move are left behind to die. Soon, though, the tide of war turns, and eventually the British march victorious into Baghdad. Having taken control of Mesopotamia, the British find they do not have the resources to govern it. What will be the country's fate? Meanwhile, the POWs who survived imprisonment re-enter an uncertain world - among them John Mason, his health ruined and future unsure. His old friend Charles Reid is more optimistic as love blossoms. But nothing is clear-cut anymore ...Harry Downe remains with his Bedouin wife's tribe: how much of his past does he truly remember? His journalist brother Michael seeks answers amidst the ruins of war as, for their friends and comrades, the struggle to survive goes on despite the conflict's end.