An engaging and educational supernatural tale.
A novel offers a ghost story inspired by World War II naval history.
Teenager Cam Lund is named for his deceased grandfather Cameron, who served on the USS Mississinewa in the 1940s. One fateful night in 1944, a Japanese “suicide sub” deliberately crashed into the naval ship, resulting in a fire and the vessel’s sinking. In an effort to learn more about his heroic grandfather’s history, Cam and his father trek to Ulithi Atoll—the ship’s final resting place—to dive to the wreck.While underwater, Cam spots a shiny object “calling” him and dives beneath the vessel to retrieve it. He later learns that it is a dog tag that belonged to Mike Bowers, a crew member who did not survive the attack. This realization coincides with a dose of spookiness when Cam wakes one morning to find salty seaweed on the floor. Strange occurrences follow him home, where he sees a ghost and smells oil in his bedroom. Cam links the spirit to the dog tag, and quickly begins researching Mike and the ship, leading to connections he never imagined. With two books in one (the second half is a brief, nonfiction overview of the events that inspired the story as well as information on the actual sailors and photographs of the ship), Fulleman presents an authentic tale about an episode that is perhaps not widely known. The story seems intended for younger readers, which explains the more rudimentary prose as well as the glossary. But the writing is sometimes repetitive, which hampers the tale’s flow: “The colors on the fish were bright, happy colors. It looked like a living wall of color…Then, the distinct gray color of the ship stood out…The color of the fish stood in stark contrast to the gray ship.” Though the prose is sometimes a bit too simplistic, the author succeeds in achieving the delicate balance of faithfully detailing a tragedy while making the story enjoyable and heartwarming. Fulleman clearly has a great deal of respect for his father (who was on the real ship during the attack) and the men who sailed with him. His work will enlighten readers about a historical event while honoring the sailors lost in the assault.
An engaging and educational supernatural tale.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-939986-23-8
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Putnam & Smith Publishing Company
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.
Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.
Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593548981
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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