The Warm Hand of Ghosts is a historical novel with a touch of magical realism about the awful war in the fields of Flanders where death, not poppies, was the only harvest. In the book, two narratives dance back and forth but never come together until near the end. When that happens the pace becomes faster and more frenetic.

Laura Iven is working at an emergency hospital treating the 9000 wounded in the great Halifax explosion that also killed both her parents and flattened her home. She receives word that her brother is missing, presumed dead, but his belongings included a note sewn into his jacket from a man pledging to take care of him. She travels back to Belgium with a nursing hero who  had been fundraising in Halifax and a woman who lost her husband and son in the war looking to find her son.

The second narrative focuses on Freddie whose story begins after he has been buried by a German pillbox, trapped with a German soldier. They keep each other going while they hope for a miracle while slowly dying of thirst while laying in water contaminated by death and war. Another explosion gives them a chance to escape and again, they save each other even from their fellow soldiers.

Freddie is looking for Laura and Laura is looking for Freddie and you might think they would find each other more quickly as they both find the same man who haunts the battlefield offering drinks and music and a chance to look into a magic mirror. But then is that man real?

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is an intriguing book. The very real horror of war is brought home again and again. The pain, the grief, the testing of one’s courage are so very real. Then there is the magical element. Laura is haunted by ghosts and though she refuses to admit that or take them seriously, they are trying to help her. There is also the vampiric fiddler who feasts on memories, not blood. I guess there is enough blood on the battlefield to glut a vampire who must then seek a more difficult sustenance.

I enjoyed it most of the time though I thought the last bit in Belgium was a bit fast and unlikely, but hey, there are ghosts, so just go with it.