As World War I spreads into Africa, Tarzan returns to find his estate devastated by German troops and, believing Jane to have been murdered, gives himself over to grief and vengeance, hunting the officers responsible while moving through enemy lines, battlefields, and the jungle with the aid of his extraordinary strength and his alliances with wild animals and great apes. Along the way he repeatedly encounters Bertha Kircher, whom he believes to be a German spy, yet her courage and unexpected actions complicate his judgment of her, and after joining the British officer Smith-Oldwick in an attempted escape by airplane, the group is drawn into still greater danger. Captivity, the search for the lost aircraft, and the ambitions of Usanga transform Tarzan’s wartime pursuit into a deeper journey through an unknown African wilderness where vengeance gradually gives way to a struggle simply to survive.
