The Brawler: A History of the World's Unluckiest Soldier

Hans Raufer, the novel's title character, has led a turbulent life! Our narrator, a Boston-based engineering specialist, is on a flight returning from a grueling field trip in the Canadian Arctic when his aircraft experiences an engine failure. The plane makes an emergency landing in Churchill Manitoba on Hudson Bay, the Polar Bear Capital of the World. Business associates arrange for our narrator to stay in Hans Raufer's spare bedroom for the several days it takes to repair the engine. In spite of worlds of differences, our narrator and Hans become friends. Gradually, Hans tells the tale of his tortuous past, revealing an unbelievable chain of conflicts, near misses, and catastrophes which range from a rough adolescence in the Hitler youth, the invasions of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the USSR, a stint with Erwin Rommel and the Afrikakorps, the theft of a submarine, Dien Bien Phu, and a hitch as a mercenary in the Belgian Congo. In the end, Hans Raufer, the Brawler, turns out to be something other than one would have suspected. Our narrator returns to his placid life in Boston chastened and uplifted both by what he has learned...and in possession of an unexpected gift.