LIKE A WILD FLOWER

About the Book

Like a Wild Flower is a World War II love story about three young people brought together by accident in the Manitoba outback. Paul Lubin is a sensitive, good-looking French Canadian who has been reared in an isolated farm community on Duck Mountain. Lovely Antoinette (Tonie) Dufay has been brought up to the age of 13 on a neighboring farm, but has spent six years in Winnipeg, including two at the University. She has become an awesome fusion of innocence and sensual awareness. Into their lives comes Martin Dorn, a Minnesota journalism graduate who has volunteered for pilot training with the RCAF. A proponent of adventure and youthful hedonism, he is Paul’s antithesis and nemesis, a serious rival for Tonie’s affection. How these three are affected by the conflicting elements of love and war makes for a poignant drama of extreme adversity tempered by incomparable joy.

About the Author

During World War II Chuck Gustafson was an Air Force pilot, training French cadets from France and North Africa. Later he returned to the University of North Dakota and obtained advanced degrees in English and Psychology. Although he started Like a Wild Flower at that time, the book was not finished until he retired to Florida after a career in human factors engineering. He recently published another novel, A Visa for Ahmad, about an American couple’s efforts to help a young Libyan escape from his repressive homeland.