Paul Brite's extraordinary life took him through every major event of the 20th Century in the United States with the exception of World War One.

In the thirties he rode the rails as a teenager during the Great Depression to escape the grinding poverty of the rural South. To survive, he worked as a cowboy and as a bouncer in a whorehouse.

In the forties he fought across France, survived the Battle of the Bulge, and took part in the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp. He was part of one of the most brutal acts by American troops against SS guards.

In the fifties he survived the bitter Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, the most horrific battle of the Korean War, and barely made it out with his life.

He worked as a field agent for Army Intelligence in Germany during the darkest days of the Cold War and went behind the Iron Curtain to spy on Soviet forces that were arrayed against America and its allies in Western Europe.

In the sixties, he ran intelligence to the Marines in Vietnam, often shooting his way past Viet Cong snipers.

What he could not do was live a normal life and, in the end, it killed him.

Take a Rifle from A Dead Man is a novel of one man's extraordinary life. It is based on a true story.