Legend Press lands Snyder's 'powerful' First World War story

Legend Press has landed The Tin Nose Shop, an “incredibly powerful” First World War novel by Don J Snyder.

World rights were acquired by Cari Rosen, commissioning editor, from Paul Bresnick at the Bresnick Weil Literary Agency in New York. The novel will be published in July 2022.

The synopsis explains: “Based on a true story, The Tin Nose Shop is set in 1916. After a military tribunal finds him guilty of cowardice, artist Sam Burke is spared the firing squad only so that his skills can be used to help fellow soldiers who have been brutally disfigured in the trenches. And so, he finds himself in a castle by the Irish Sea, surrounded by casualties of war and trying to come to terms with the violent death of his best friend and the promise he has failed to keep.

“At the Tin Nose Shop, Sam battles his own demons as he learns to create intricate metal masks to hide the mutilation suffered by the men around him. But will he too be able to find the courage to make the same journey from despair to a desire to live on in the world?”

Snyder was born and raised in the US, is the author of 10 novels and non-fiction books, and wrote the movie “Fallen Angel”; it starred Gary Sinise and Joely Richardson. He now lives in Scotland, where he established the world's only caddie training school for soldiers, to try to help servicemen from around the world who are suffering from PTSD.

He said: “It has been estimated recently that we live in a world now where there are 1.6 million soldiers suffering physical and mental wounds from the last two wars they were sent to fight, in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wrote The Tin Nose Shop to capture one of the untold stories of the First World War, to try to draw the public’s attention to the way soldiers suffer and to the humble nobility with which they carry themselves. It took me six years to write this novel and I am thrilled that it is being published by Legend Press, which is based in London, the city where so many British soldiers in the First World War spent time in hospital more than 100 years ago."

Rosen commented: “Don perfectly captures the fact that for many men who fought in the trenches, the aftermath of war was as traumatic as anything they faced on the battlefields. The combination of this extraordinary story and Don's exquisite writing is both incredibly powerful and intensely moving.”