Dilemma in the Desert (Dane Shaw Adventure, #1)

It is January, 1943, in Tunisia during World War 2. Captain Drew Matthews is sent on a mission behind enemy lines to secure vital information. He is ambushed but is able to escape. Joining a group of American soldiers, led by Corporal Dane Shaw, refugees from the recent battle, they make their way across the desert to the city of Sfax, where Drew is to meet with the mysterious 'Monsieur Gascoigne'. They stumble across a small group of Arabs and Germans guarding a halftrack filled with treasure looted from murdered Jews and rescue their prisoner, the beautiful Frenchwoman Angelique DuBois. While driving to Sfax, Dane shares his Christian faith with his companions while trying to avoid a group of Arab raiders. Dane relies on God to direct his life while proving himself a wise and outstanding commander with ferocious fighting skills. While Dane and his men fight off the Arab bandits, Drew and Angelique enter Sfax for their meeting only to be met with a number of very unwelcome surprises. Escaping by a series of fortunate circumstances, which leads them to believe that there may be something to Dane's God, they return to camp only to run into more trouble. Zabronski, one of the American soldiers, filled with lust for the treasure and for Angelique, subverts the other soldiers, kidnaps Drew and Angelique and wounds Dane. Forcing Drew to reveal where the treasure is hidden, they are met by the Germans and Arab bandits who have joined forces and tracked them down. Drew and Angelique are rescued by Dane, and in a wild night ride across the desert, pursued by vengeful Germans and Arabs, they attempt to reach the American lines before dawn. Will they make it, and will Angelique solve the dilemma of which man she loves and which god she will serve?

Dwayne Straw grew up in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He has always enjoyed reading books, with his mother starting to read to him when he was a baby. As a young teenager growing up in the Sixties, one of his favorite places was the Young Adult Room at the local library, where he discovered authors like Joseph Altscheler, Robert Heinlein, and Andre Norton.
During junior high school, he wrote a series of science fiction stories about a soldier and his adventures fighting in China, Mars, and space. He never wrote again until recently, when he remembered those stories and sat down and started writing the Dane Shaw Adventures.
He accepted Jesus as his savior when he was five years old one hot summer day when he and his sister started asking their mother questions about God. She stopped ironing and sat down with a Bible and showed them the answers. They both were saved then. As an adult he has served in his local church as an usher, Sunday School teacher, church treasurer, and deacon.
He currently resides in Omaha, Nebraska, with his wife and two children.