In Randall and the River of Time we're taken along on a young man's journey from a naïve child to a mature, experienced adult. Although just a teenager during WWI, Charles Randall learns quickly how to stay alive during battle. During his first leave he meets two people who forever change his life. The wife of another military man intrigues and fascinates him. Sadly, a telegram announcing the death of her husband arrives, and he is drawn further into her web. However, he is also fortunate enough to impress a highly influential man with his knowledge and scientific evaluations of flares used for the war effort. His inventiveness results in a welcome, but unexpected chain of events including financial benefits as well as special treatment. As this relationship builds him up, so the other one tears him down. Randall's impromptu marriage takes him down a lonely, desperate path full of deception and adultery as he finds himself in prison for manslaughter. The fears, horrors and awfulness of trench warfare during the First World War are described in sufficient detail for the reader to understand how normal people can react violently. The murder trial readily conveys the abilities of the players with contemporary dialog. In the final paragraph, C.S.Forester writes: The river of time was whirling him along. Chance eddies had flung him here; chance eddies had flung him there. The broad river had a myriad channels, and now an eddy was parting him from the other flotsam with which he had been circling and was pushing him far over into another channel altogether. There he might circle, there he might come into contact with other flotsam, but always he would be hurried along, down the smooth reaches, over the cataracts, until at last he would be cast ashore and the river would hurry along without him.
