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THE LAST JUMP

Name: THE LAST JUMP
Author: John E. Nevola
ISBN: 978-1-4327-5665-9

A NOVEL OF WORLD WAR II

by John E. Nevola ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 29, 2010

A rigorous, if bloated, tale about race and honor in World War II.

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A journalist doggedly attempts to unravel a mystery about his father’s wartime service in this novel.

John Patrick “J.P.” Kilroy Jr. is a political columnist for the Washington Times who is estranged from his father, Johnny. When he’s called on to receive the Medal of Honor on Johnny’s behalf, Kilroy didn’t even know that he was dead. Reluctant to collect the award, Kilroy eventually relents. At the White House ceremony, he meets four men who served with his father in World War II: Schuyler Johnson, Harley Tidrick, Frank West, and Lincoln Abraham. Abraham is also getting a medal, one of seven African-Americans who served in World War II to be so decorated and the only living recipient. Kilroy is regaled by all four of his father’s old friends about Johnny’s service as an elite Army paratrooper. The columnist learns about Johnny’s best friend of the same name, called Jake to distinguish between the two. Kilroy soon becomes suspicious the crew is harboring a secret regarding his father, an impression all of the men eventually confirm. Nevertheless, they made a pact to never disclose the truth, compelling Kilroy to pursue the matter. Meanwhile, he begins a torrid romance with Cynthia Powers, a representative from the Army’s Public Affairs Office. Nevola (Revenge of the Pearl Harbor Survivors, 2011) spent four years researching this novel, and his scrupulously punctilious efforts show—his mastery of the historical material is astounding. The author is particularly adept at explaining the complex race relations that characterized the military at the time, wrought with prejudice and segregation. In a memorable exchange with Kilroy, Abraham complains bitterly that some German prisoners of war were treated with more respect than African-American soldiers. But Nevola buries readers under a mountain of minutiae and overdeveloped subplots, which is why the book needlessly registers at more than 500 pages. In addition, its tone can be cantankerously didactic: Schuyler grouses too hyperbolically about the decline of America. Still, the story’s denouement is spectacularly creative, justifying the author’s dawdle getting there.

A rigorous, if bloated, tale about race and honor in World War II.

Pub Date: July 29, 2010

ISBN: 978-1-4327-5665-9

Page Count: 530

Publisher: Outskirts Press

Review Posted Online: March 2, 2018

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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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.