A gripping story whose grasp sometimes loosens in explanatory passages.
A reporter for the Washington Post debuts with the forgotten story of a pilot whose B-24 crashed near the Charley River in some of Alaska’s most remote territory in December 1943.
At the outset, Murphy acknowledges a number of problems. The pilot, Leon Crane, who died in 2002, was never willing to talk much about his ordeal; there were no other survivors among the crew. Later, the author writes, researchers have not been able to settle on a definite cause for the crash. Much remains unknown, so Murphy supplies what is missing, inventing dialogue (exterior and interior) and other aspects of the narrative. He also writes—sometimes at unnecessary length—about other crashes, other survival stories, other players in the drama, and other events in the region (the Klondike Gold Rush). He alludes to Jack London and “Bard of the Yukon” Robert Service, and he teaches us about frostbite, hypothermia, and other dangers of the North. Crane’s story remains a compelling and astonishing one. He survived in brutal conditions, principally because he stumbled upon a remote cabin that held all sorts of supplies—food, clothing (until the cabin, he’d had no mittens), a rifle, and a stove. He survived some nearly fatal falls through the Charley River ice and managed, at last, to find a cabin inhabited by a friendly soul who was able not just to comfort him, but, later, to introduce him to the man whose cabin and cache Crane had discovered. The author does some hopping about in time and space, periodically devoting space to Douglas Beckstead (an on-the-ground Crane-crash researcher who did not live long enough to write his own account), the failed recovery efforts launched by the military in late 1943, and the horrified families.
A gripping story whose grasp sometimes loosens in explanatory passages.Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-306-82328-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
