New novel explores time travel and returning soldiers

That’s the subject of a new novel by Donald McDonald, an author from Tumby, near Coningsby, and looks at how the lives of German mariners in World War II are changed forever.

His new novel ‘Dead Submariner’ sees a U-boat dive beneath the surface of the North Atlantic in October 1942, and mysteriously re-surfaces in 1988.

Gradually, the Kapitän and crew come to realise they have been propelled through time when radio silence is broken.

The story explores the strengths, weaknesses and delicacies of the human condition as the men struggle to come to terms with the situation.

U-116 returns to West Germany to a hero’s welcome, but the ordeal for most of the submariners is only just beginning as they set about tracing their erstwhile families in a divided country.

"People are always horrified when they think about the Holocaust,” Donald explained, “But first and foremost, these men are Mariners attached to the Navy, and they return home to a divided country and they’re just trying to find their families.

"These men in their mid twenties have left behind wives of a similar age, who are now elderly in their 70s and they’ve got to try and find them.

"You’ve got these men coming home to a country divided, with West and East Germany, and there’s triumph and tragedy in equal measure.”

Donald’s idea for this book came about when he was doing some research into German U-boats and found that the U-Boat 116 actually existed and dived in September 1942 in the North Atlantic ocean with more than 50 people on board, but then disappeared just weeks later, never to be seen or heard from again.

He came up with the thought that what if it wasn’t lost forever, but has simply travelled through time into a parallel universe?

This is Donald’s tenth novel, and Dead Submariner is available to buy for £9.99 by visiting https://www.brewinbooks.com/dead_submariner along with his other titles.

You can also find Dead Submariner on Amazon from Friday (September 30) at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Donald-McDonald/e/B00943L61G/