Unto All Men: A Novella

By Taylor Caldwell

As a Nazi invasion looms, eight men in Czechoslovakia prepare to resist, in this powerful novella by the New York Times–bestselling author.

Hitler’s forces are about to close in, but a small group of men is determined to take a stand against the German aggressors. Each of them knows that it will almost certainly be a futile act—but to them, the alternative is unacceptable. This suspenseful story follows the men’s thoughts, memories, and emotions as they await the inevitable—and steel themselves for a battle that may be the last they ever fight.

Originally published decades after Taylor Caldwell’s death, this is a deeply moving portrait of those who resist tyrants, and of the distinction between a military victory and a moral one.

“A wonderful storyteller.” —A. Scott Berg, National Book Award–winning author of Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Apr 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9781504095952

Taylor Caldwell

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) was one of the most prolific and widely read authors of the twentieth century. Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in Manchester, England, she moved with her family to Buffalo, New York, in 1907. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel when she was twelve. Married at age eighteen, Caldwell worked as a stenographer and court reporter to help support her family and took college courses at night, earning a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931. She adopted the pen name Taylor Caldwell because legendary editor Maxwell Perkins thought her debut novel, Dynasty of Death (1938), would be better received if readers assumed it were written by a man. In a career that spanned five decades, Caldwell published forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers. Her best-known works include the historical sagas The Sound of Thunder (1957), Testimony of Two Men (1968), Captains and the Kings (1972), and Ceremony of the Innocent (1976), and the spiritually themed novels The Listener (1960) and No One Hears But Him (1966). Dear and Glorious Physician (1958), a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God (1970), about the life of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time. Caldwell’s last novel, Answer as a Man (1981), hit the New York Times bestseller list before its official publication date. She died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1985.  

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Editor’s Note

This story recently came to light as a bequest to her grandchildren by Taylor Caldwell. It has as background the impending invasion of the German Army into Czechoslovakia, and as foreground the thoughts of 8 men who decide to make a defense against the Germans, knowing that it would be a futile military effort but a self redeeming symbolic one. Taylor Caldwell tells the story of each, the twists and turns of their thoughts, as they each decide to stay and fight. It’s quite a call to the futility of war, and yet the necessity of not accepting tyranny.

Here is a picture of the first page of the manuscript:

A picture of the first page of the manuscript

Unto All Men

The schoolhouse stood directly in the center of the road, which shone whitely in the silent and deserted sunlight.

The little building, which at the most held not more than twenty-five pupils and their teacher, held no pupils today within its thick graystone walls. There was the motionless and empty silence of the Sabbath about it. Its windows were shuttered, its short sturdy door, which faced the east, locked and barred. It was a square building, rather low and squat, yet full of strength. The thickness and roughness of its walls gave it a pudgy effect, somewhat grim and unmovable, and its slightly peaked roof seemed pulled down resolutely upon its head.

The long white road stretched away smilingly, rising and falling gently, towards the near mountains. The mountains, so clear and translucent, seemed carved with an axe of light from the intensely blue skies. Those to the west were almost incandescent, so that their chaotic outlines were barely perceptible against the brilliant heavens. Those to the northeast, however, were of such purity, such delicate blueness, that they appeared formed of hollow glass and ice, through which light poured. But between the mountains and the little solid schoolhouse there was the greenly-breathing rise and fall of a sweet and peaceful valley, empty and calm.

Not a thing stirred or moved. There was no sound, not even the faintest, not the shadow of a whisper, in all that pellucid world. And yet within that schoolhouse were eight men, ready for death, prepared for death, waiting for death.

The interior of the schoolhouse was so dim, from the closed door and the shuttered windows, that objects could scarcely be seen. But after a few minutes it was possible to discover that the little innocent wooden desks and benches had been pushed abruptly to the walls in disordered and hasty heaps as though they were irrelevant articles. It was possible to discern the men there, the eight men, in their bulky coarse uniforms, their packs on their backs, their long guns, pointed with bayonets, gripped in their hands. Upon their faces were gas-masks, making them look like monsters from some evil nightmare. They had arrived only a few minutes ago, and in deep dusty silence were trying on their masks, testing the readiness of their guns. There was about them an air of resolution and despair, the air of men who had decided to die.

The light was very dim, yet little pencils of sunlight kept darting through the chinks in the shutters, and these little pencils would flash suddenly upon the bayonets, making them slender and dazzling mirrors, sending luminous shadows of them upon a hand, a gun, the bulk of a shoulder. And the small neat blackboards, covered with spectral and childish scrawls, lined the walls, and