The Perfumed Letter: The Fire and the Fog of WWII

Through the scorched hills of Sicily, 1943, a soldier in Company M of the 1st Division, US Seventh Army, contracts malaria in Troina just as the Allies' strategies change and the war's tempo shifts. The Perfumed Letter traces the emotional and physical moments-where battle rages, illness halts movement, letters go unanswered, and a year of silence begins. This becomes the fundamental year of training for Operation Dragoon: a stretch of time suspended between fire and fog, void of letters home, where recovery becomes its own battlefield. Through archival fidelity and sovereign storytelling, Olan L. Smith maps the unseen war behind the war-the one fought in the body, the post, and the heart.