East of the Armistice: A Novel American Expedition to Siberia, 19181920

The Great War is over. Private Daniel Mercer is still carrying a rifle.November 1918. While America celebrates peace, Daniel and the 31st Infantry remain on Russia's Pacific coast, guarding a railway through a civil war no one can explain-and no one seems able to end.Daniel came to Siberia trusting that someone above him understood the mission. Nadezhda "Nadya" Lebedeva, a Russian railway telegraphist, knows better. Every train moved, message sent, and bridge defended favors somebody. Neutrality is a word used by men far from the tracks.As Daniel and Nadya are drawn together across language, duty, and divided loyalties, six American soldiers disappear along the Suchan line. Rumor outruns evidence, fear hardens into certainty, and Company A is ordered toward Romanovka. Caught between lawful orders, the men beside him, and civilians who will pay for decisions made far away, Daniel must decide what duty means when victory itself cannot be defined.Grounded in the little-known American Expedition to Siberia, East of the Armistice is a character-driven historical novel of railways, winter, friendship, dark humor, hard-won affection, and the moral cost of a war that refused to end.