Trial By Fire
The Last Good War: A Novel of World War II
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
December 7, 1941
"A day that will live in infamy," is how President Franklin Delano Roosevelt described the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. With a devastating stroke, World War II was no longer a strictly European war; it was now our war, too. In this powerful, exciting sequel to Battle Lines, James Reasoner shows us the fight through four friends cast into the chaos of the war that reshaped the twentieth century.
As the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, they simultaneously launch an assault on Wake Island, where Adam Bergman is one of the marines working feverishly to complete the installation of an airstrip. He is unaware of the Pearl Harbor disaster that sends hundreds of casualties streaming into the hospital on the United States Naval Base, where his wife, Nurse Catherine Tancred of the Naval Medical Corps, is one of dozens ministering to the wounded and dying.
While Adam and Catherine are immersed in the Pacific war effort, their friends Joe and Dale Parker are stationed with British tank divisions that are fighting the Germans for control of North Africa.
Joe and Dale are only supposed to advise their British allies, but before long, Dale is manning a tank to help stem the tide of battle, and Joe is working directly with British intelligence in Cairo.
Upon entering World War II, Americans fought to defend freedom around the world. Through the eyes of those in battle, we share their struggles and hardships in this memorable story of Americans at war.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Beginning on the eve of Pearl Harbor, this second volume of Reasoner's WWII epic follows a group of childhood friends who fight for their country in far-flung theaters of war. Adam, a marine, and his navy nurse wife, Catherine, are stationed in the Pacific; GI brothers Joe and Dale serve as tank force advisers to the British in the deserts of North Africa. A handful of other holdovers from the first volume, Battle Lines, and new characters like navy pilot Phil and nurse Missy promise to keep things moving through the next installment. Keeping everyone straight can be a bit of a problem, because almost all are young, na ve, sterling athletes, gung ho, true blue and darned good looking the soap-opera plot seems to exist mostly to paste the war story together. Readers launching into the novel will quickly qualify for combat pay as they do battle with wooden dialogue, flat characters and repetitive, pedestrian prose. If that's not daunting enough, the multiple plot lines are unbalanced and points of view shift capriciously as the novel lurches toward the climactic Battle of Midway. Reasoner's talent does emerge often enough to underscore the book's unrealized potential. He definitely knows his history and can write a good combat scene; with some editorial guidance, this could have been a fascinating, big canvas novel on the order of those of James Jones or Herman Wouk. As it stands, however, the book fails to improve on its equally weak predecessor.