Since he first heard a herald in the marketplace when he was ten years old, all Jacob Hintze has wanted to do is play the trumpet. Apprenticed to a German cavalry unit as a teenager, he is thrown into the horrors of the Thirty Years War. Employed as a courier and secret agent by his Duke, Jacob meets love, hatred, vengeance and betrayal as around him Europe tears itself to pieces. He plays his trumpet on the battlefield to send men to their deaths; he makes music in holy service to the glory of God. Jacob Hintze's life story is a stirring struggle in which music, war, espionage and the love of a good woman wrestle for his soul on a backdrop of bloody conflict and fragile peace.
