Michael J.Goodspeed

Three to a Loaf is the First World War story of Rory Ferrall, a young Canadian officer of Anglo-German descent who, after being wounded and disfigured at Ypres, comes to the attention of British military intelligence. Ferrall's German background is valuable to the war's planners. Hundreds of German-Americans had returned to the Fatherland to fight for the Kaiser at the outbreak of war in August 1914 and the British captured one. Cleverly trained to impersonate the captured German-American officer, Ferrall is smuggled into wartime Germany to infiltrate the German General Staff and discover their top-secret plan to break the stalemate on the Western Front.

          A page-turning novel of war and espionage, Three to a Loaf is also a portrait of societies and individuals pushed to the breaking point, and in some cases, beyond. Michael Goodspeed artfully blends the tension of a thriller with period detail, the detached commentary of a nitty-gritty travelogue, and psychological understanding of a harried man facing soul-destroying ethical decisions.

Author Michael Goodspeed's careers in business and the Canadian army as an infantry officer have found him living and working across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. With degrees in literature, business administration and strategic studies, Goodspeed has authored articles, newspaper columns and the 2003 book When Reason Fails: Portraits of Armies at War. He and his wife Shannon, parents of three grown children, live in a heritage farmhouse in Eastern Ontario.