Rare Encounter

Based on a true story, Rare Encounter is historical fiction--a sweeping narrative pivoting on family histories, battlefield courage, tragic miscalculations, inspired women, social prejudice, and enduring love. Roger Lincoln Shinn is an esteemed professor of social ethics at a prestigious New York institution. Known only to his wife, he had faced the unspeakable as a combat infantryman in the Second World War. But two decades later during the Vietnam War, Shinn reveals to stunned students his astounding story as a soldier and prisoner of war and those of a defiant captain in his outfit who ruptures the boundaries of conventional warfare. On a converted ocean liner en route to fight the Nazi army in Europe, the proper young Shinn meets John William Hall, a rough-hewn Southern rifle champion rebelling against the family bloodline. Hall left the dark rage of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl for the vortex of world war, and the two captain’s destinies intertwine at the ferocious Battle of the Bulge. This is the story of two uncompromising soldiers caught in humankind's darkest venture. Rare Encounter explores the sometimes hazy meridian between right and wrong, sanity and madness. It will grip readers intrigued by vivid human stories formed from inside monumental events.