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It’s 1989, and Nick Becker has left a promising career as a big city newspaperman to fight for his family’s old farmstead in Northern Michigan. While developers and lawyers wrangle over the remnants of this last, best property along the Lake Michigan shore, Nick tries to unravel a legal mess caused by his grandfather’s curious will. While Nick chases stories for the local paper, he also digs through five cardboard boxes of old letters, photographs, and documents left to him by a recently deceased aunt. There he discovers the extraordinary lives of his grandparents — Col. Joe Becker and Anna Johnson Becker. Joe’s career, which spans nearly half a century, includes service in every branch of the military. Joe and Anna’s lives unfold before Nick’s eyes as he follows their journey from the North Woods logging boom of the early 1900s to the decks of the last Navy ship to cruise the Great Lakes … from a remote garrison in Cuba to the U.S. Cavalry’s last campaign chasing Pancho Villa’s renegades into Mexico … from the deadlocked World War I trenches of Alsace-Lorraine into the most decisive battle of the “War to End All Wars.” As Joe and Anna’s lives intersect with American icons such as Ernest Hemingway, Marine Corps legend Smedley Butler, George Patton, and Gen. Pershing, Nick unearths long-buried secrets that have a more profound impact on his present troubles than he ever bargained for.