The Weapons of Dawn—historical fiction in the works.
For some time I’ve been working on a novel that follows the adventures of two German-born brothers who, in the 1920s, land in opposing countries. Peter, who changes his name to Pyotr, becomes an important filmmaker in the USSR. Young August moves to the USA and rises to high rank in the Air Force. The men, and the women they love, all find themselves involved in their countries’ races to build thermonuclear weapons.

The novel begins with a true story, an intriguing incident told by David Holloway in his book Stalin and the Bomb. Eager to impress visiting Chinese communist, Stalin showed them “a film that was said to be of a Soviet nuclear test,” wrote Holloway. “This was weeks before the first Soviet atomic bomb test took place.”

Who made that film? There’s no information, so I assume it was Pyotr, my fictional protagonist. The “fake” film soon brought hostile differences among real people like the famous J. Robert Oppenheimer.

These images depict the four main characters, Pyotr and Nina, August and Rita, were produced by the artist Jack Renney. I call the manuscript The Weapons of Dawn.