The Trench Angel

An inherently absorbing and exceptionally well crafted novel from beginning to end, "The Trench Angel" showcases the extraordinary storytelling talents of author Michael Keenan Guiterrez. "The Trench Angel" is very highly recommended for community library Mystery/Suspense collections.—Midwest Book Review


Gutierrez's debut sets the industrialized murder of World War I as backdrop to the murderous industry of coal mining in the American West circa 1919.... While Gutierrez draws Paris, the Belgian war-front, and the rough-hewn frontier town with a good eye—"the sun hovered over the Rocky peaks, shading the mountain snow like a bruise"—the novel's unfiltered lens reveals war's cost to the human psyche, the amorality of concentrated wealth, the cancer of racial and ethnic hatred, and the nearly unresolvable conflict between familial loyalty and moral responsibility. By turns lyrical and brutal, Gutierrez stretches an intriguing piece of historical fiction to cover multiple themes. —Kirkus


The Trench Angel is a vivid and engaging novel and it carries a doomed, bloody and wondrous vision of the World War I trenches and the American West in the years after The Great War. It's also a ripping good yarn. —John Dalton, Heaven Lake

An inherently absorbing and exceptionally well crafted novel from beginning to end, "The Trench Angel" showcases the extraordinary storytelling talents of author Michael Keenan Guiterrez. "The Trench Angel" is very highly recommended for community library Mystery/Suspense collections.—Midwest Book Review


Gutierrez's debut sets the industrialized murder of World War I as backdrop to the murderous industry of coal mining in the American West circa 1919.... While Gutierrez draws Paris, the Belgian war-front, and the rough-hewn frontier town with a good eye—"the sun hovered over the Rocky peaks, shading the mountain snow like a bruise"—the novel's unfiltered lens reveals war's cost to the human psyche, the amorality of concentrated wealth, the cancer of racial and ethnic hatred, and the nearly unresolvable conflict between familial loyalty and moral responsibility. By turns lyrical and brutal, Gutierrez stretches an intriguing piece of historical fiction to cover multiple themes. —Kirkus


The Trench Angel is a vivid and engaging novel and it carries a doomed, bloody and wondrous vision of the World War I trenches and the American West in the years after The Great War. It's also a ripping good yarn. —John Dalton, Heaven Lake