“This compellingly readable book is all the more remarkable for its profound erudition.”

             —Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Emeritus Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh, author of A Question of Standing: The History of the CIA (2022), The Nazi Spy Ring in America (2020), and The FBI: A History (2007).

A novel based on history that's both important and entertaining

Veteran's Key is a terrific read, a thoroughly engaging novel written with a nod to the literature of the 1930s in which it is set. Based on real events and people, this one has it all: colorful, well-developed characters, disguised identities, espionage, sex, and ultimate-stake risks. The plot moves along at an ever-accelerating rate, alternately amusing and tension packed. Its arch heroine is a badass teenager who packs, always knows how to handle herself, succeed in her mission and come out alive, even when forced to become a double agent.
The book also gave me a much clearer insight into how war trauma leads to PTSD, and what it's like to be in the midst of a lethal hurricane, than any movie ever has. The author, a veteran himself, has an unmistakable appreciation of veterans. In fact, his legal battle to secure memorials for them is what led him to write the novel. Read it!

-Ruth Cashin Monsell, Author of Frances Perkins, Champion of American Workers (2024)

“Veterans Key opens in 1935 as hundreds of derelict vets of the Great War are working in ramshackle government relief camps bridging a gap in the Overseas Highway connecting Key West with the mainland.

One hot August morning, two striking co-eds, Cindy and Ella, step off a train in Islamorada to be greeted with the crude cat-calls of beery veterans. What happens next is unexpected. Cindy singles out Fred, a soft-spoken, muscular vet drinking a Coke. He offers her a sip. She accepts, flirts, and invites him to her hotel in Key West for an amorous rendezvous.

Eager to meet Cindy, Fred has no inkling that he has in fact been chosen to participate in a carefully planned bank robbery in Havana, the results of which will have enormous consequences for everyone involved. But this pivotal event is barely an introduction to the riveting mystery that is Veterans Key, a serio-comic novel with moments of pathos, terror, and more twists and turns than a cottonmouth snake.

Cindy’s brother Emilio is a Cuban revolutionary intent on avenging his torture by deposed General Machado’s secret police. Cindy’s father is a former official of the target bank and his knowledge of the contents of a certain safe deposit box is critical for the heist. Fred’s role is to play the patsy in the robbery and the investigation that will surely follow.

As the story unfolds, the characters’ various involvements with good guys and thugs, including the Cuban police, American FBI agents, Communists, Nazi spies, and mobsters from the Meyer Lansky gang make for a rich mix of deceptions, lies and misdirection. Ultimately Ella may be the most complex figure of them all, a 17-year-old German Jew living an impossible balancing act.

Bareford creates a vivid and compelling adventure by weaving the historical with the plausible.

The disdain of camp officials for the men in their charge and the devastating aftermath of the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane adds gravitas to the deceptively light tone throughout much of the book.

Veterans Key evokes other distinctive novels including The Horse’s Mouth and A Confederacy of Dunces, not for their story lines but for the originality of their thinking. Readers may appreciate the nods to Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not. There is no “predictable” here, only the sheer joy of an original work that commands your attention on its own terms. Highly recommended!”