With his finger firmly placed on soldiers’ wartime experiences, the author delivers a potent, thrilling collection of...
A group of stories provides military melodrama and trouble galore.
Dedicated to “those in peril on the sea,” Hess’ (Unloaded, 2016, etc.) atmospheric and moody collection of 16 war-themed tales offers characters who find plenty of danger all on their own. The impressive title story, which takes place aboard the USS San Jacinto, seems drawn straight from a fictional Navy man’s journal. The first-person narration brings readers to the battle stations of a ship at the mercy of storms, death, and long months at sea yet concludes with a homecoming saluting the fierce allegiance, pride, and American patriotism of the armed forces. When two shipmates quarrel in the striking tale “Last Battle Aboard the Old Pro,” the outcome is violent and unexpected. Through authentic dialogue and jagged details, Hess’ stories become effective snapshots of military life, including its unsavory aspects as well as the provocative ones. This occurs best in the daring, crass, sexually charged game of “Smiles” enjoyed among randy crewmates docked on Philippine soil, where a soldier preparing to leave on honorable discharge winds up dissatisfied with the prostitutes who shimmy around him “as if they are sandwiches in a vending machine.” Elsewhere, the unpredictable chaos of military duty dominates: ships are tossed around amid rough seas; death saturates a Navy crew with the mere unlatching of a watertight engine room hatch; and the unforeseen suicide of a lieutenant discovered by a smitten soldier in “Here Today, Guam Tomorrow” proves a painful coda to a hardscrabble story about finding human connections on the Pacific island. The physical and mental fallout from war for soldiers is palpable in less contemporary tales like “Strong to Save,” set in 1949, and the racially charged “Attention on Deck,” in which a white Navy man in 1972 witnesses hate and anger from a group of black sailors eager to settle the score. Tension is at its highest in the exhilarating “Cash for G_d,” in which a desperate ex–Navy sailor holds up a grocery store at gunpoint, with the result ending up much bloodier than he’d anticipated. Cohesively rough and edgy, Hess’ heady volume should appeal to fans of military suspense as well as readers who want a generous slice of hardened Navy SEAL action stocked with grizzly servicemen doing the best they can.
Pub Date: May 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943402-82-3
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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