The Meuse-Argonne Front, France, 1918

The central action of Angel Down unfolds on the Western Front during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, where trench lines, shell craters, and constant bombardment erase any stable boundary between safety and danger. This setting shapes the novel’s tone of relentless pressure, since even rear duties like burial work occur amid fresh explosions, gas, and bodies that will not stay buried. The landscape also turns the miraculous into a tactical problem, because the angel’s light is immediately a target in a war built around visibility, artillery, and massed killing.

Company P’s Trenches and No Man’s Land Near the Bois de Fays

The trench system and the wire-strewn gap of No Man’s Land are where the men first hear the shriek and where the angel is discovered tangled in concertina wire. The claustrophobic trenches amplify fear through forced proximity, making decision-making feel like...