It has been drummed into Tiberius Antonius all his life: the love of a woman corrupts the soul, clouds the mind and distracts a Roman from his duty to the family. Now he faces an agonizing decision—tell the truth and ruin his family, or tell a lie and condemn the woman he adores to the vilest of deaths, crucifixion.
Tiberius is a Senior Tribune fighting in the Roman legions, as the Emperor Augustus maneuvers to expand the Empire by conquest and create the new province of Germania Magna. Helena is his childhood friend, but he’s never allowed himself to return her love, because it’s not the Roman way.
Yet when he is gravely wounded battling against the barbarian horde, she nurses him back to health and he finally submits to his love for her, which has sustained him during warfare’s darkest days.
They plan to marry, but only then discover that they are not masters of their own destiny. When Helena is wrongly accused of a murder comitted by Tiberius’ brother Lucius, Tiberius must decide whether to betray Helena or forsake his brother.
A Man at War is a completed, 138,500-word novel of historical fiction set in Roman Spain, Italy, and Germany at the turn of the first century A.D. It deals with war between nations and within people, and the terrible consequences of impossible choices. The novel is a love story imbued with political intrigue, family treachery, and the splendor and brutality of ancient Rome.