Moore is a narrator with an eye, indeed, a love, for details. In Steel Shards, he turns his talents to the world of World War II. Once again, as is so often the case with Moore’s work, he turns away from the excitement of the atmosphere and hones in on provide honest, faithful, and respectful renditions of his characters.

In Steel Shards, we find ourselves following, with a broad scope, the actions of Captain Kimbro, baptized Anthony, Sawyer. He’s a soldier, in World War II, and like so many soldiers, he was involved in the tragic excitement of war. Here we can follow one soldier’s progress through many theaters of the devastating war. We can follow the military strategies and personal efforts of the soldiers.

But this is not all about the war. This is about soldiers, about the narrations of their individual experiences in combat, abroad, and at rest. It involves the people he meets in his time, and the people he loses. In this work, Moore shows the effects of absolute and fatal violence and large scale chaos on the human spirit.

For a new take on a war so long studied and never well-understood, pick up this book. Moore’s respectful and detailed recount gives a human context to an inhuman war, and paints his characters with the dignity and honesty all people deserve.

TB Koskie,
T&R Reviews

I found this to be a well thought out and extensively researched book. Written by a man who has himself lived through and experienced the trials and adversity of war, it is beautifully and insightfully written, the extraordinarily conscientious writing and impressive craftsmanship of the author certainly whets the appetite for more books by Bidwell Moore.

The theme of life’s victims defying the odds emerges forcefully here in a riveting and hugely entertaining tale of life during wartime. The author traces the financial, political, military, and personal machinations that drove America into a major global war. These are issues highly worthy of reflecting on. Mr. Moore has crafted a plausible story, full of thrills, that is closer to reality than any government would care to admit.

Kimbro Sawyer and Nadine Denis are unique characters with great heart. These and the other characters in the book have depth and as the book goes on and the reader gets to know the characters more and more there becomes a feeling by the reader that he or she knows these people and has even shared some of the same thoughts and feelings.

Looking at WW II through the eyes of American, British, French, and German participants, the reader experiences the complexity and devastation of war from the perspective of all sides involved.

Edge of the seat drama? It’s here... but there are also humor and wonderment, and a sensitive exploration of friendship.

The author’s mastery at action writing with the combination of expertly detailed combat scenarios and primal emotion will certainly give fans of Bidwell Moore’s books their money’s worth.

Randy Murray,
Author Celebrity Associates
October 20, 2007

With a degree in History and a deep interest in all things military it is not often that I learn something new and amazing. For example, who would have guessed that the United States military's first target in World War 2 were the French!

That is just one of the many revelations in Bidwell Moore's, Steel Shards. Through Captain Kimbro Sawyer we learn a great many things about the real lives of the people swept away by the greatest event of the 20th Century.

Unlike the books of Tom Clancy Steel Shards does not worship every soldier and every weapon. Rather, it tells the real story of what it was like to be in Europe in 1942 through believable characters with realistic flaws.

Captain Sawyer is transported across the Atlantic aboard the Queen Mary. While on board, the reader is introduced to a likable but realistic character.

Upon arriving Captain Sawyer meets Nadine Denis, a beautiful and clever woman tasked with keeping a crucial secret, the date American troops will arrive. Nadine is beset by German agents that will stop at nothing to learn what she knows. Nadine has English AND German family and therefore must struggle through unimaginable pressure from both sides.

Captain Sawyer’s loyalty is clear but his many missions are not. Sawyer fights in different actions across the many battlefields of World War 2, culminating with an assault on Omaha Beach. Unlike other books in this genre, these battlefields were not fictional, but real history where the fate of the world hung in the balance.

This book is engagingly written and painstakingly researched. The detail is so rich and the characters and their flaws are so real that the author must have lived through similar action himself.

Steel Shards tears down many of the half-truths and outright lies of World War 2, chiefly the character and role of the leaders and soldiers of France. It also portrays the German soldiers and people not as monsters, but the regular men and women they were--swept into a disaster not of there making.

Steel Shards is a literary landmark that should be required reading for officers, soldiers and historians.

Brien Jones
Jones Harvest Publishing
April 6, 2007

Author Biography

Bidwell Moore

Bidwell Moore, the son of a regular army officer, graduated from the Punahou School in Honolulu in 1935 and West Point in 1940. Assigned to the 26th Infantry as an anti-tank platoon leader, Moore remained with the regiment, an element of the 1st Infantry Division, until July 1944 when he was transferred to the 5th Field Artillery Battalion, also an element of the 1st Division. Kasserine Pass, Omaha Beach, the Battle of the Bulge were signal actions.

Mr. Moore has traveled and resided widely in the United States, Asia, Europe and Mediterranean Africa. In Switzerland, he served as an assistant military attaché and held intelligence posts in Washington.