A gritty, realistic, and sometimes preachy final installment in the late Carroll's Vietnam War trilogy (North S.A.R., 1991; Ghostwriter One, 1993). In the spring of 1975, Navy pilots Tim Boyle and Santy are sent to Saigon to help coordinate the evacuation of the Americans and their South Vietnamese friends. As North Vietnamese forces approach, the city is nearly paralyzed with fear. Santy and Boyle fight the clock, Viet Cong sappers, incompetent superior officers, and the accidents that befall those under the pressures of war. Meanwhile, Navy SEALs Thompson and Dalton are trying to locate one of their own, Tony Butler. Listed as MIA since 1968, Butler has been leading montagnard tribesmen in a guerrilla war against the North. Thompson and Dalton have been in sporadic contact with him, and send him one last message: If you want out, it's now. As Butler heads south to his rendezvous point, Thompson and Dalton make their way north, through the North Vietnamese armies rushing toward the final battle. Back in Saigon, the evacuation resembles a riot, and Carrollin top form herecreates a palpable atmosphere of doom and despair. When Thompson and Dalton finally reach Butler, Boyle and Santy make one last air-borne foray into the jungle. As in his previous novels, Carroll's authentic details immerse you in the action, whether he's describing the landing of a disabled helicopter on an aircraft carrier, or the Saigon crowds storming the US Embassy. But the presence of political message begins to grate: The real villains, we read over and over, are a gutless Congress and a US citizenry lacking moral courage. Strangely, Carroll assigns the presidency little blame. And the military? It's always pure of heart and motive. Still, the intense drama of a nation's collapse, combined with jolting action scenes, carries you through the polemical discourse.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-86510-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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