The Great War, or World War I, ended nearly 100 years ago. Few of us alive today are able to speak to the way it was, or the events leading up to the First World War, except through historical ephemera. In M.J. Joseph's very fine book, The Lubecker, the reader is taken on a journey that starts in the latter part of the 19th century and finishes just as events occur that have led to the start of a devastating war.

The book follows the lives of a number of characters. Dr. Sam Yoffey begins this saga in the northern Florida Panhandle in the late 1880s. Jewish, South Carolinian by birth, he works closely with a group of Roman Catholic nuns to serve the underserved poor of the region. David Rosenberg, a German boy of relative wealth and privilege, proves himself to be a strong, prominent actor in this book. A childhood friend of David's from England, Thomas Twinge-Kitchen, spends a great deal of time with David as they attend school, and eventually each joins the military of their respective countries.

An interesting sub-text within The Lubecker is the philosophy of several men closely attached to David and Tom, and it plays an important part in their upbringing and understanding of the events and people leading to World War I. Along the way, the reader learns about Palestine, Zionism, Sufism and the people populating a part of the world that was not then as well known and understood as it should have been.

I would have liked a page in this book with a chronology of events, but this is something that a reader could easily look up. Many of us know very little about the various causes of the Great War. We may think that a disgruntled young man from Sarajevo who assassinated Arch Duke Ferdinand started it all. The Lubecker, with its insights and the interplay of its characters, makes the reader wish to read further about events, the people and the countries that contributed to the war -- and learn why so much turmoil continues today in so many parts of the world.