A novel of wartime bombing missions that makes for gripping reading.
This second book in Freeland’s planned trilogy about the McCormick military family aims to put readers in the pilot’s seat.
The saga began in Legacy of Honor: The Patriarch (2022)with Sam McCormick’s service in World War I. The main character of the current volume is Sam’s son, Sean McCormick,who flies B-17 and B-29 bombing missions against strategic sites in Germany and Japan during the last two years of World War II and, in the book’s second half, in the Korean War. Freeland is an absolute master of flight-combat narrative; a decorated veteran of air combat in Vietnam, his ability to put the reader in the seat of a B-17 beset by German fighter planes and anti-aircraft fire is superb: “We are now flying in German-controlled airspace….Radio chatter is sparse but intense. They are headed toward us, the trailing formation. My stomach tightens, it’s cold up here, but I’m already sweating, and my heart races.” Readers will find themselves on the edge of their seats as Sean guides his crew through multiple terrifying encounters with a relentless airborne enemy. The camaraderie of the men with whom he flies is also well-handled, as their mutual respect and shared commitment to duty allow them to persevere over dozens of hair-raising missions from which some don’t return. Although Sean is the key character here, his encounters with famous historical figures, such as Gen. Curtis LeMay and Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, give the narrative a feeling of authenticity that ensures the dramatic narrative doesn’t overwhelm the true historical context. Freeland’s skills are less effective at dealing with personal relationships, and some readers may also wish deeper introspection from the main character in particular. For fans of combat fiction, though, this book will be a welcome addition to a genre already packed with exciting literature, and readers interested in how ideas of duty and honor sustained American servicemen under the most trying conditions will find it well worth the investment.
A novel of wartime bombing missions that makes for gripping reading.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 462
Publisher: Publish Authority
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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