Early Reviewers

In Only Breath & Shadow, the final instalment of the Castle Drogo series, author Andrew Tweeddale weaves a gripping narrative of sacrifice and moral clarity set against the darkening backdrop of 1930s Vienna.

Christian Drewe, an English gentleman blinded and scarred during the Battle of the Somme, has built a life in Austria, navigating his world through sound, smell, and touch. However, as the Nazi shadow stretches across Europe, Christian’s ordered and regimented world is shattered by the Anschluss and the escalating persecution of his Jewish friends.

When his friends, the Friedmanns, are dragged away to concentration camps, Christian finds himself the unlikely protector of their four young children. Aided by Claire Astor, a spirited American nightclub singer, and his fiercely loyal housekeeper, Frau Agnes Huber, Christian must move out of the shadows and transform into a man of decisive action.

As they orchestrate a desperate escape for the children, they find themselves in the crosshairs of Gestapo Major Ernst Schmidt, a man determined to root out "enemies of the state" and those who aid them. Blending historical fact with fiction—including the real-life mission of Gil and Eleanor Kraus to rescue fifty Jewish children—this novel explores the irony that true sight resides in moral clarity, even when the world is plunging into darkness.