The Call Of The Bugle

The Call of the Bugle by author and former professor John Amos opens with exactly that: a bugle call echoing in the mind of a jaded, aging reporter whose struggles with alcoholism are compounded by memories of war. The sound first haunted him as a young correspondent covering the Crimean War in 1854, and it never stopped.

Amos’ riveting narrative transports readers to Balaklava, where the reporter watches in horror as 600 British cavalrymen ride straight into Russian guns during the catastrophic Charge of the Light Brigade.

Tormented by what he saw and driven to uncover the truth about the disaster, the reporter spends decades immersing himself in forgotten diaries, long-hidden letters, and interviews with the daughters of the fallen, piecing together the life and death of General Robert Dryden — who appeared to be smiling as he charged the gates of hell. But as the past resurfaces, the reporter must confront more than historical facts: the unquiet ghost of the general and the memory of a love he refuses to name.

The Call of the Bugle is a sweeping, multi-generational historical saga set against the stark reality of the Crimean War. It is a haunting meditation on valor and folly, memory and masculinity, and the unspoken costs of war.

Readers who love Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See or Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong will find in The Call of the Bugle the same fusion of meticulous historical research and devastating emotional truth. 

SPIN Magazine assistant editor Charles Moss calls the book “a sweeping, haunting, historical epic that methodically pulled me in and refused to let go.” And Graham Watts, Officer of the Order of the British Empire, said, “The scent of gunpowder and the sense of heroism spreads through The Call of the Bugle like a sizzling fuse.”

The Call of the Bugle
Publisher: Imagination Press
ISBN-13: ‎979-8950191015
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