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
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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