This is a riveting tale of brotherly love, tested in a time of global war. The characters are vividly drawn, the action riveting and the suspense almost overwhelming. The reader will wonder as they turn each page, will two brothers, one a White House aide and another an officer aboard a storied aircraft carrier – find their younger brother, a POW held in a brutal Japanese prison camp?
While that sounds like a great plot for a mini-series or a blockbuster movie, it is the true store of three brothers from New Jersey in the midst of WWII in a terrific new book by Sally Mott Freeman.
Drawing on diaries, letters, interviews, newspapers, wartime reminiscences and government archives stored in dusty cardboard boxes, Freeman writes of the courage and perseverance of young men – her uncles – in the midst of the greatest armed conflict in human history. This is a great summer read by a splendid writer.
After three years preparing The Triumph of William McKinley by reading very little but books, letters, articles and newspapers from the Gilded Age, I’m trying to get back into my regular routine, which I’ll chronicle here with an occasional review of what I’ve read.
