A well-written and engaging tale about a remarkable and courageous group of radio operators.
This second volume of a historical fiction series focuses on the Navy’s “On-the-Roof Gang,” a highly trained and dedicated band of radio operators who are Americans’ eyes and ears in the Pacific theater during World War II.
This group was called the On-the-Roof Gang because the members were trained in a hutch on the roof of the Navy’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The band was the brainchild of a driven man named Harry Kidder, who developed the curriculum. The school began in 1929 and kept turning out graduates right up through the early years of the war. The esprit de corps was almost mystical. The novel takes readers from the infamous Pearl Harbor attack to the end of the war, detailing the gang’s victories and losses. One of the most gripping parts of the tale is the capture and subsequent imprisonment of the operators on Guam, which became overrun just days after Pearl Harbor. They wind up in Zentsuji prison camp in Japan, suffering incredible hardships but never cracking, largely through the leadership of Radioman First Class Markle Smith, an extraordinary figure whose exploits are heroic. But readers get a tour of the whole war, from Pearl Harbor through Guam and Corregidor and then, with the tide turning, Midway, Coral Sea, Leyte Gulf, and on and on. Zullo calls his absorbing book fiction for the good and simple reason that he creates scenes and dialogue when he has to. But make no mistake, this is authentic history. All the characters are real people (like Smith) who performed bravely. In fact, when the author is not creating scenes—which he does quite well—he is scrupulously listing all the people involved, all the mind-numbing acronyms, all the minutiae of a vast war machine. So there is good stuff here for military buffs as well as those who just like an engrossing story. And there is ancillary information front and back (for all that initialese) as well as copious illustrations throughout: maps and period photographs. This sequel to Zullo’s Prelude To War (2020) shows members of the Greatest Generation at their greatest in a truly stirring account.
A well-written and engaging tale about a remarkable and courageous group of radio operators.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73515-272-1
Page Count: 442
Publisher: ZooHaus Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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