The Wooden Shepherdess is the sequel to The Fox in the Attic , and the second volume of Richard Hughes's monumental historical fiction, The Human Predicament." It opens with Hughes's hero Augustine in prohibition-era America, where he is a bemused onlooker and increasingly fascinated participant in a country intoxicated with sex, violence, and booze. Then, in brilliant cinematic style, the book moves to Germany, where the Nazi Party is gradually gaining in power; to the slums and mining towns, parliamentary backrooms and great houses of a Britain that is teetering on the verge of class war; and to the wilds of the Atlas mountains of Morocco. The book ends with a terrifying account of the Night of the Long Knives, as Hitler ruthlessly secures his hold upon Germany.This new edition of The Wooden Shepherdess concludes with the twelve chapters that Hughes completed of the planned third volume of The Human Predicament , here published for the first time in America.About the Richard Hughes (1900-1976) published his first novel, A High Wind in Jamaica , in 1926. It became a bestseller in England and America, won the Prix Femina in France, and has since established itself as a modern classic. Hughes's other books include In Hazard, a story of men at sea, and The Fox in the Attic and The Wooden Shepherdess , the first two volumes of an unfinished trilogy, The Human Predicament , about the rise of German Fascism and the onset of World War II.