A creative addition to the annals of fictional naval warfare.
This inventive debut wartime novel transports military buffs right into the heart of the action.
Weatherly, a pen name for a retired U.S. Navy captain who commanded three ships over 30 years of service, has chosen an intriguingly flawed protagonist for this World War II–set story. In 1942, Capt. Sheppard McCloud is lauded as a national hero. He commanded the USS Shenandoah in a failed counterattack against the Japanese after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. He’s now recovering from a serious leg injury from that assault and keeps blaming himself for the deaths of his crew members that day. The Navy finds him fit for duty again, but his unspoken doubts remain: “Now that his physical injuries were healing, the Navy assumed that Sheppard was still that confident leader…but they were wrong.” McCloud soon finds himself in command of the battle cruiser Argonne, part of a battle group tasked with an important mission to secure shipping lanes from German U-boats, ships and planes so that badly needed supply convoys can reach the beleaguered British. The question is whether he’s up for the challenge and whether he can outrun his ghosts: “He had to become the confident leader again for the sake of his new command. He knew that if he failed, the men would doubt him and more sailors—his sailors—again…would die.” Weatherly does a masterful job of describing the American, British and German soldiers who will eventually take part in the battle, and most importantly, he makes readers become invested in these characters. He also accomplishes the tricky task of supplying enough detail for hard-core military aficionados without derailing casual readers. Overall, he successfully brings the world of naval warfare to life in all its sound and fury. However, he never glorifies it, as he also paints the sobering aftermath in somber tones.
A creative addition to the annals of fictional naval warfare.Pub Date: May 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-1491731925
Page Count: 352
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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