Arthur Rosen, a young man living in Brooklyn in 1936—with the Depression in full swing, his mother gone, his father a drunkard—kills a Nazi brownshirt in self-defense and must flee the country. Across the Atlantic, the democratically elected Spanish Republic is attacked by an army of mercenaries, led by Francisco Franco, whose goal is to destroy the Republic and establish a right-wing dictatorship. He is supported by the aristocracy and the Catholic Church, and receives arms and troops from Germany and Italy. 40,000 young men and women from around the world drop their lives and travel to Spain to stop the spread of fascism. Arthur joins them and becomes a soldier in the International Brigades.

A beautiful Spanish woman photographer lands an assignment to cover the growing civil war in Madrid, her childhood home—to show the world the atrocities being committed by the invading army. A young woman from a small village, a victim of those atrocities, escapes after being raped and tortured and makes her way to Madrid to join the fight.

The first novel in English fully set in the Spanish Civil War since Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls, Pandaemonium Moon richly recounts Franco’s siege of Madrid, where the lives of these three individuals fatefully come together. Together they will face the long, bitter battles that ensue. The boy from New York transforms from an unfocused fugitive into a disillusioned war hero, in love with a woman stronger than he is.

The novel portrays a time when dictators in Europe and Asia used racial and ethnic resentment to build strong autocratic societies where the wealthy class could control their economies while the populace became oppressed, a time when many people were afraid of what the world was becoming. The relevance to our time is obvious. Pandaemonium Moon is a powerful story of wartime, of love, of friendship and unthinkable bravery—about the degree of courage it takes to fight the evil of fascism first hand.