A worm’s-eye fable of how Machiavellian General Douglas MacArthur, having won the war in the Pacific, goes on to wage peace against his subtle former adversaries. When V-J Day catapults MacArthur from five-star general to Supreme Commander of Occupied Japan, the old fox reacts as if he’s spent his entire life preparing for this chance. Laying siege to the princes and diplomats whose country his forces have so recently been bombing, MacArthur craftily wangles his way into a position of unprecedented power and prestige. The general sees his calling as a high one: to prepare the way to an orderly peacetime economy and culture for the conquered nation, to bring war criminals to speedy justice, and to urge a democratic constitution on a country whose dynastic history stretches back thousands of years. Yet his private prejudices and grievances, dispassionately recalled by his aide-de-camp, Captain Jay Marsh, sway his every plan, first obliquely and then ever more directly, as he vows to protect Emperor Hirohito’s family from prosecution because he needs an intact monarchy to sponsor his reforms, and as he prosecutes honorable, innocent General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, for the 1937 rape of Nanking in order to shield perpetrators he can—t afford to accuse. MacArthur’s visionary flaws are echoed in a minor key by Jay, who, like his boss, compromises his romance with a beautiful Filipina at the Army’s behest, and—encouraged by the example of an exasperated prosecutor who manipulates MacArthur into dismissing him from the judge advocate’s staff and shipping him back stateside—ends up gambling his principles and future on an attempt to outmaneuver the wily general. Despite a lumbering opening and some plummy prose, Webb (Something to Die For, 1991, etc.) makes winning the Japanese peace look every bit as challenging and tragic as winning the war. (film rights to Scott Rudin/Paramount; Book-of-the-Month Club selection; $150,000 ad/promo budget; author tour)
Pub Date: April 28, 1999
ISBN: 0-7679-0076-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
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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