The Steel Wave was published by Ballantine Books in 2008, the second volume of the World War II trilogy. The novel covers the invasion of Normandy — from the months of planning and deception that preceded it through the desperate fighting on the beaches and in the hedgerows, to the eventual breakout that made the liberation of France possible.
The perspectives include Eisenhower (bearing the weight of the most consequential military decision of the twentieth century — whether to launch despite the weather), Rommel (racing to fortify the Atlantic Wall while fighting Hitler’s conviction that the real invasion would come at Calais), and Sergeant Jesse Logan (now an experienced paratrooper dropping into the darkness behind the beaches in the early hours of June 6).
Shaara’s D-Day is not triumphant mythology but controlled chaos: paratroopers scattered across thirty miles of Norman countryside, gliders crashing into hedgerows, infantry pinned under fire on beaches that the preliminary bombardment failed to suppress, and individual soldiers making the small decisions — to move forward, to suppress that machine gun, to not lie down and die — that collectively determined whether the invasion would succeed or fail.
The hedgerow fighting that followed is treated with equal attention: weeks of grinding combat in terrain that perfectly favored the defender, where the bocage turned every field into a potential ambush site and American tactical doctrine proved inadequate until soldiers invented solutions on the ground.
Collecting The Steel Wave
First edition (Ballantine Books, New York, 2008): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $8–$15
- Signed first edition: $20–$50