A mature rumination on war that will have extra appeal for WWII buffs.
McCall (Set Apart, 2010) offers a small-town coming-of-age story that deepens as it blends into real-life World War II history.
Eighteen-year-old Corbin O’Connell lives in Judson, Pennsylvania, a charming small town that’s reminiscent of It’s a Wonderful Life’s Bedford Falls (but without Mr. Potter). Corbin is being pursued by the conniving Velma Hix, but he’s really in love with Daisy Hall. However, Daisy and Corbin’s best friend, John Ottinger, the scion of Judson’s richest family, have long been an item, and Corbin respects that. Desperate to escape the farm, Corbin sees joining the Army, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, as a godsend. In the late summer of 1942, he and a reluctant John arrive in Europe—months after D-Day, when the war is expected to safely wind down. But instead, they’re just in time for the Battle of the Bulge, Germany’s last desperate move. Very soon, Corbin is captured, and he’s eventually taken to Berga, a slave-labor camp. The brutality that the men experience there is nearly unimaginable, as their sadistic captors hold the Geneva Convention protocols in contempt. As the men starve and freeze, they hear the American and British planes overhead; they’re eventually saved only by the German surrender. Overall, McCall is an adept writer who delivers by showing the everyday aspects of war, as well as the big picture: “Veneered over the devastation of war was the confusion of war—the delayed, lost and wrong information that was, in its own way, nearly as damaging as bullets flying at the front.” The novel becomes even more engrossing in later chapters when Corbin gets back to Judson—and he’s a far different person from the kid who thought his escape would be a lark.
A mature rumination on war that will have extra appeal for WWII buffs.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9845589-2-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: JJ Publishers
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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