A French intelligence officer, Assem, is tasked with tracking down a former member of the U.S. Special Forces suspected of drug trafficking during the War in Afghanistan. En route to Beirut he shares a night with Miriam, an Iraqi archaeologist, who is in a race against time to save ancient artifacts across the Middle East from the terrorist group ISIS. Punctuating these two storylines are vignettes from the bellicose past, including: Hannibal's failed march on Rome and the burning of his fleet on the waters of the Mediterranean; Grant's pursuit of the Confederates into rural Virginia; Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomatox Courthouse; and Emperor Haile Selassie's exile from his country of Ethiopia. All turning points in world history, each showing a will to continue in the face of defeat. In Hear Our Defeats, Gaude writes with a gripping immediacy, seamlessly taking the reader across the battlefields of our past to the covert conflicts being waged today.