An extraordinary, moving account of survival and endurance.
A novelistic biography focuses on the remarkable story of a tail gunner whose plane was shot down during World War II.
Gene Moran grew up in Soldiers Grove, a small farm town in Wisconsin with a population of 624. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, he was eager to join the war, and just after he turned 18 years old, he managed to convince his begrudging parents to grant him permission. He enlisted in the Air Corps and became trained to become a tail gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress, joining the crew of the Rikki Tikki Tavi. On a dangerous bombing mission conducted above Bremen, Germany, Moran’s plane came under heavy fire—the tail split from the rest of the plane, and he plummeted to the Earth four miles without a parachute. Miraculously, Moran survived, though badly injured—both of his arms were shattered by bullets; some of his ribs were broken; and his skull was fractured. This marked only the beginning of what Moran was to endure, a harrowing experience deftly described by Armbruster. After multiple surgeries, Moran spent 17 months in a German prisoner-of-war camp and suffered “starvation, deprivation, sickness, despair.” The author aims for what he calls “narrative nonfiction”—a true, novelistic account free of embellishment and as accurate as Moran’s memory and willingness to share allowed. At one point, Moran declared: “There are some things that are NEVER going to go into any book!” Armbruster includes an account of Moran’s liberation from captivity and his return home, a touching story of personal triumph that defies belief. In addition, the author depicts his chance meeting with Moran and the context of the period, including the poignantly related tale of Armbruster’s wife’s struggle with brain cancer, one to which she ultimately succumbed. Moran’s survival is a cinematically grand story, bigger than life but not fantastical, dramatically gripping as well as emotionally stirring.
An extraordinary, moving account of survival and endurance.Pub Date: April 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64538-315-4
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Ten16 Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.
The Harvard historian and Texas native demonstrates what the holiday means to her and to the rest of the nation.
Initially celebrated primarily by Black Texans, Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865, when a Union general arrived in Galveston to proclaim the end of slavery with the defeat of the Confederacy. If only history were that simple. In her latest, Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and numerous other honors, describes how Whites raged and committed violence against celebratory Blacks as racism in Texas and across the country continued to spread through segregation, Jim Crow laws, and separate-but-equal rationalizations. As Gordon-Reed amply shows in this smooth combination of memoir, essay, and history, such racism is by no means a thing of the past, even as Juneteenth has come to be celebrated by all of Texas and throughout the U.S. The Galveston announcement, notes the author, came well after the Emancipation Proclamation but before the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Though Gordon-Reed writes fondly of her native state, especially the strong familial ties and sense of community, she acknowledges her challenges as a woman of color in a state where “the image of Texas has a gender and a race: “Texas is a White man.” The author astutely explores “what that means for everyone who lives in Texas and is not a White man.” With all of its diversity and geographic expanse, Texas also has a singular history—as part of Mexico, as its own republic from 1836 to 1846, and as a place that “has connections to people of African descent that go back centuries.” All of this provides context for the uniqueness of this historical moment, which Gordon-Reed explores with her characteristic rigor and insight.
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-883-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
