AFRICAN AMERICAN MILITARY TEXTS BOOKS

Truth: red, white & black

Author: Morales, Robert

During World War II, while the U.S. military is attempting to develop a serum that will create the world's perfect fighter, one young African-American soldier, Truth, survives the experiments that are meant for Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America.

Other Contributors: Baker, Kyle: illustrator

New York: Marvel, 2004, 168 p.
Reviews for this Title:
Publishers Weekly Review: In 1940, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Captain America, a frail patriot who was transformed by a "super-soldier serum" into a physically perfect specimen to champion freedom, an American alternative to the Nazi uebermensch. Now, writer Morales pursues this idea and also draws inspiration from U.S. government experiments in the 1930s that left unwitting African-Americans infected with syphilis, leading to many deaths. Beginning his story in 1940, Morales incisively depicts the racism his various African-American characters confront both in civilian life and in the military. These black soldiers are compelled to act as test subjects for the super-soldier serum; some die, while others become deformed. Ultimately only one survives, Isaiah Bradley. Substituting for Captain America on a mission, Bradley discovers Jewish concentration camp inmates subjected to experiments. Ranging from heroic figures to pointed caricatures, artist Baker makes his varied styles gel. Drawing on copious research, Morales dramatizes how racism corrupted American history, yet verges close to asserting moral equivalency between America and Nazi Germany. Roosevelt was ultimately in charge of the super-soldier program: would he have approved these human experiments? Besides, how can one talk about "truth" regarding a fictional creation? Simon and Kirby devised a fable about an American everyman tapping his inner strength to combat genocidal fascism; Kirby helped pioneer positive depictions of blacks in comics. By adding Morales's backstory to Captain America's origin, Marvel has turned the character into a white superman who owes his powers to the deaths and exploitation of African-Americans. (Feb.)
? Staff (Reviewed May 10, 2004) (Publishers Weekly, vol 251, issue 19, p39)

Other titles associated with this book:
Red, white & black
Red, white and black

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0785110720

Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Added to NoveList: 20050720
• TID: 135347

Buffalo soldiers

Author: Willard, Tom

In 1869, August Sharps, free from Kiowa captors, enlists in the Tenth U. S. Cavalry and spends his days as a soldier at Fort Wallace, Kansas, until he and his wife retire to Arizona.

New York: Forge, 1996, 331 p.
Reviews for this Title:
Publishers Weekly Review: To kick off his Black Sabre Chronicles, a series about African American military men, Willard tells the tale of Augustus Sharps, who in 1866 is saved from certain death in a buffalo stampede and from further slavery (even though it's after emancipation) by two black cavalrymen. The Buffalo Soldiers were black freemen and former slaves who joined the U.S. Army's 9th and 10th Cavalry in 1866, fighting hostile Indians, Mexican bandits, bitter racism and extreme weather along the western frontier. Among the Buffalo Soldiers (so named by Plains Indians as a sign of respect), Augustus finds comradeship and purpose. For 30 years, he serves his regiment with distinction, winning the admiration and respect of his fellow soldiers and their white officers. Augustus and his devoted wife, Selona, share a life of hardship and sacrifice, raising two sons amid the perils of the frontier. From the freezing plains of Kansas to the harsh Texas deserts and the arid mountains of New Mexico and Arizona, the Buffalo Soldiers battle Indians as well as the taunts and prejudice of the white settlers they protect. Success on the battlefield, however, does not protect Augustus from the racist hatred of a murderous Texas Ranger or the ruthless threats of the Ku Klux Klan. Willard delivers a compelling and action-packed story filled with historical personages and a proud sense of national redemption. (June)

Library Journal Review: Held captive by the Kiowa and then bartered to a white buffalo hunter, Augustus Sharps is freed in 1869 by troopers of the all-black Tenth U.S. Cavalry, in which he enlists. First in a series chronicling African American contributions to U.S. military history, Willard's (Death Squad, HarperCollins, 1992) well-researched novel traces Augustus's soldiering from Fort Wallace, Kansas, until his retirement to an Arizona ranch. Through it all, he and his long-suffering wife, Selona, cross paths with such luminaries as Buffalo Bill Cody and George A. Custer. Not to be confused with Robert O'Conner's brooding, Helleresque Buffalo Soldiers (Knopf, 1993), this book begins shakily with needless hyperbole but recovers sufficiently to paint a compelling portrait of a family that not only endures the hardships of 19th-century army life but also the ingratitude of white society. Recommended, with slight reservations, for public libraries.--Robert P. Jordan, Univ. of Iowa, Iowa City

Other related features:

1. Explore Fiction - Adult -> Explore Fiction -> Westerns -> Army in the West

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0312860412
0812551052 : Paperback - Mass Market
0783819439 : Hardcover - Large Print
0606204733 : DEMCO Turtleback
0613334612 : Glued Binding
0756906326 : Glued Binding

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• American Historical Fiction: An Annotated Guide to Novels for Adults and Young Adults, published by Oryx Press
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 007702

Where I'm bound: a novel

Author: Ballard, Allen B.

An escaped slave, Joe Duckett joins the Union Army during the Civil War, becomes a hero in a black cavalry regiment, and searches for his family as the war draws to an end.

Booklist Review:

Ballard has penned a stirring novel extolling the long-neglected contributions and heroics of black soldiers during the Civil War. Factually grounded in the military campaigns of the Third U.S. Colored Cavalry, the more intimate story line revolves around the personal and professional exploits of Sergeant Joe Duckett. Duckett, an escaped slave turned soldier, serves proudly and with distinction, inevitably enduring all the indignities heaped on black enlisted men in the Union army. Alternately exalted and frustrated by the course of the war, he never loses sight of his ultimate goal: to be reunited with his wife and children, the family he lost to the cruel vagaries of slavery. A complex, passionate portrait of an African American patriot, this rousing historical adventure compares well with the Black Sabre Chronicles, Tom Willard’s serial tribute to black military men.

(Reviewed October 15, 2000) -- Margaret Flanagan

School Library Journal Review: Adult/High School-An engrossing fictional account of the important role of African-American soldiers in the Civil War. Joe Duckett, whose father was African and whose mother was "part colored, part Choctaw," escaped from the Mississippi plantation where he and his family were enslaved. He joins the Union army and the strong and skillful man moves up the ranks of the Third United States Colored Cavalry. All the while, he sorely misses his wife and their three children and holds onto the dream of reuniting with them. The historical facts are presented in a compelling way, the characters are vivid, and the battle scenes are alive with tension and action. Readers are kept in touch with the complex emotions and thought processes of a wide range of characters, both male and female, black and white, as the story unfolds. The one disappointing aspect of this informative and highly entertaining novel, however, is its attribution of Joe's bravery and fierce pride solely to the Native American part of his ancestry. Nonetheless, it would be a perfect read for students who are studying the Civil War.-Joyce Fay Fletcher, Prince William County Library System, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly Review: Nonfiction author Ballard (The Education of Black Folk), a history and African-American studies professor, combines both areas of expertise in his debut novel, to show what life was like for black cavalry scout Joe Duckett and an all-black regiment during the Civil War. Duckett flees a harsh Louisiana plantation in 1863 to join up with Union troops fighting the Confederates, leaving behind a wife, Zenobia, and daughter Cally. His other two children were sold to another slave holder, and Joe's dream of reuniting his whole family is the heart of the narrative. Ballard chooses to tell Joe's story through a chorus of voices, which provide the viewpoints of both enslaved and freed African-Americans, as the conflict finally swings in favor of the North. Zenobia, loyal to Joe, dodges the attentions of Drayton, a black overseer, but when the owners of Kenworthy plantation decide to move their human chattel into Alabama to avoid the advancing Yankees, Zenobia accepts the chance offered by Drayton to keep her family geographically closer to possible freedom. The shattered life of Maj. Richard Kenworthy provides the Confederate point of view, as Kenworthy raids abandoned plantations along the Mississippi. Ballard's well-researched and vivid portrayal recreates the decline of the Old South and delves into the psychology of racism not only on the part of the Confederacy, but also among many Yankee soldiers who resisted viewing their black troops in human terms. Avoiding stereotypes, Ballard contextualizes the main characters historically, and gives them nuanced personalities and expressive dialogue. Despite a series of predictable, overly romanticized final scenes, This is a powerful novel about a soldier fighting in a war that would determine his personal destiny and that of a young nation. Agent, Owen Laster. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal Review: This first novel by Ballard (history and African American studies, SUNY at Albany) describes the Civil War battles fought by the 3rd U.S. Colored Cavalry Regiment, as seen through the eyes of Sgt. Joe Duckett. Joe has run away from the Kenworthy plantation, leaving behind his wife and baby daughter. Their struggle for freedom while dealing with hardships like lack of food and clothing, corrupt overseers, sickness, and bands of irregulars and deserters alternates with the engagements and maneuvers of both the 3rd Cavalry and the Rebel forces, commanded by Joe's former master. Although the author has altered some actual battles and events, this is a well-told narrative of life in all social strata of Louisiana and Mississippi after the fall of Vicksburg, with detailed descriptions of such phenomena as the refugee camps. The characters are superficial and flat, however, and the reader must struggle to stay involved in what is otherwise a compelling story. Recommended for larger public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/00.]--Ann M. Fleury, Tampa-Hillsborough Cty. P.L., FL Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews The experiences of black soldiers during the Civil War, and the ordeal of a family victimized and fragmented by slavery, are the subjects in this well-researched and solidly written debut novel, by a respected teacher and historian (One More Day's Journey, not reviewed, etc.).
As the War draws to its close, runaway slave Joe Duckett escapes from a Confederate prison camp and joins the Union Army as a scout, then is soon made sergeant in a Colored Cavalry troop. Meanwhile (and in parallel chapters throughout), Joe's wife Zenobia, left behind on the Kenworthy plantation in Mississippi, plans to escape to freedom with her youngest children (the two eldest having been sold to another owner), aided by black field-boss Drayton, who not-so-secretly loves her. Ballard leans rather too heavily on melodramatic coincidence: people who in real life doubtless would never have seen one another again manage to keep meeting on various estates and battlefields (the most egregious such examples are Joe's chance reunion with his oldest son Luke and his man-to-man combat with Colonel Richard Kenworthy). But the story is swiftly paced and filled with vivid incidents, many of which, as an Author's Note explains, are indeed historical: the court-martial aboard ship (a steamboat carrying cotton to Vicksburg) of a racist civilian who had interfered with a black soldier on sentry duty; Zenobia's flight by raft in pursuit of a Yankee boat, and her capture by "deserters and irregulars"; and a horrific scene in which the Union Army unleashes maddened bloodhounds against its foe. The narrative is further distinguished by crisp, credible dialogue and scrupulously fair and fascinating portrayals of the wide spectrum of relationships—many of them genuinely loving ones—between embattled, indignant Southerners and "their" blacks. And you won't soon forget the haunting final scene.
One wishes Ballard Godspeed in his wisely chosen new career. This is a fine beginning to it.
(Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2000)

Other related features:

1. Awards (Best Fiction) - Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> BCALA Literary Award -> First Novelist Category

2. Awards (Best Fiction) - Young Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> School Library Journal's Adult Books for High School Students -> 2001

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0684870312
0684870320 : Paperback
0595398561 : Paperback - Print on Demand

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• School Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 014024

Miracle at St. Anna
James McBride

Author: McBride, James, 1957-

Set in Italy during World War II, Miracle of St. Anna is the story of four Negro soldiers in the 92nd all-black, segregated Buffalo Division. Sam Train, one of these soldiers, befriends a six-year-old Italian boy who leads the soldier and his squad into the Serchio Valley and the site of a tragic massacre.

New York: Riverhead Books, 2002, 271 p.

Booklist Review: McBride, the author of the best-selling memoir The Color of Water (1996), turns his hand to fiction in this stirring tribute to the human soul. Sent to Italy to fight under unbelievably harsh and unfamiliar conditions, the members of the Ninety-second all-black, segregated Buffalo Division distinguished themselves both on and off the battlefield during World War II. Cut off from their unit during a botched advance, four GIs become the improbable guardians of a traumatized Italian boy who has lost the power of speech and the ability to remember his past. Refusing to abandon the child, Sam Train, an illiterate giant of a man, insists on carrying the boy to safety. In a remote mountain town, the Americans learn from a handful of suspicious villagers, a rag-tag band of Italian partisans, and a remorseful German soldier that the boy was the only survivor of a brutal massacre. Although McBride touches on issues of race, atrocity, and evil, these diverse characters are able to transcend such human failings through love and faith.
(Reviewed February 1, 2002) -- Margaret Flanagan

Publishers Weekly Review: Following the huge critical and commercial success of his nonfiction memoir, The Color of Water, McBride offers a powerful and emotional novel of black American soldiers fighting the German army in the mountains of Italy around the village of St. Anna of Stazzema in December 1944. This is a refreshingly ambitious story of men facing the enemy in front and racial prejudice behind; it is also a carefully crafted tale of a mute Italian orphan boy who teaches the American soldiers, Italian villagers and partisans that miracles are the result of faith and trust. Toward the end of 1944, four black U.S. Army soldiers find themselves trapped behind enemy lines in the village as winter and the German army close in. Pvt. Sam Train, a huge, dim-witted, gentle soldier, cares for the traumatized orphan boy and carries a prized statue's head in a sack on his belt. Train and his three comrades are scared and uncertain what to do next, but an Italian partisan named Peppi involves the Americans in a ruthless ploy to uncover a traitor among the villagers. Someone has betrayed the villagers and local partisans to the Germans, resulting in an unspeakable reprisal. Revenge drives Peppi, but survival drives the Americans. The boy, meanwhile, knows the truth of the atrocity and the identity of the traitor, but he clings to Train for comfort and protection. Through his sharply drawn characters, McBride exposes racism, guilt, courage, revenge and forgiveness, with the soldiers confronting their own fear and rage in surprisingly personal ways at the decisive moment in their lives. Agent, Flip Brophy. Author tour. (Feb. 4)
— Staff (Reviewed November 26, 2001) (Publishers Weekly, vol 248, issue 48, p37)

Library Journal Review: The miracles of survival, of love born in extremity, and of inexplicable "luck" are the subjects of this first novel by the author of the best-selling memoir The Color of Water. During World War II, in the Serchio valley deep in the Italian Alps, a small African American division of the U.S. army struggles to obey the orders of unseen white men in a war that is for them illogical and rife with cruelty. Sam Train, the perfect soldier (he's big, he's kind, he can shoot a gun, he follows orders, and he's dumb), finds himself behind enemy lines in the company of a wounded child—a rescuer in need of rescuing. His comrades, when they arrive, unwittingly unmask a traitor among the Italian rebel forces, whose actions explain the riddle of a massacre and the village siege. Similar to Louis de Bernières's Corelli's Mandolin (LJ7/94) in its treatment of Italian wartime village life and the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity, this story is true to the stark realities of racial politics yet has an eye to justice and hope. Highly recommended for all public libraries and for book discussion groups. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ10/1/01.]—Jennifer Baker, Seattle P.L. (Reviewed February 15, 2002) (Library Journal, vol 127, issue 3, p178)

Kirkus Reviews Four Americans from the 92nd Buffalo Division and a Tuscan village endure the worst of the war in a brutal and moving first novel from McBride (a bestselling memoir: The Color of Water, 1996).
The glossy Tuscany of Frances Mayes and the integrated army of Colin Powell are a half-century in the future in McBride's history-based story of black Americans thrown against African-Americans in the storied 92nd joined New Zealanders, Gurkhas, and other Commonwealth forces to take back central Italy from the still-lethal German army. Today's dreamy hill-towns and mountain vineyards were barren deathtraps in the freezing winter rain. Gigantic, gentle, illiterate Sam Train sets the action moving as he follows orders to snatch a young Italian boy from danger, then runs blindly in the wrong direction, clutching the boy and the souvenir marble head of a Renaissance statue he'd found earlier. Dodging gunfire, Train heads for the hills, convinced that the carving lends him invisibility. Three comrades, a brainy officer, a wily ex-preacher, and a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, try to retrieve Train, but he won't leave the badly wounded child. The four soldiers, surrounded by the Germans massing for a new assault, are eventually forced into the village of Bornacchi, where residents are reeling from the Nazi slaughter of hundreds of their neighbors in the nearby church of St. Anna. Still, in the face of the worst that war has to offer, the villagers—pragmatic, superstitious, realistic and, to the wonder of the black Americans, willing to treat them with respect—not only persist but survive. The Americans' very dicey situation deep in enemy territory is complicated by the arrival of a band of local partisans under command of the legendary Black Butterfly, with his own agenda. All will meet the Wehrmacht, but amid the treachery will come some small miracles before the end.
McBride's heart is on his sleeve, but these days it looks just right.
(Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2001)

Other related features:

1. Annotated Book List - The Roots of Modern African American Fiction

2. Book Discussion Guide - A Gesture Life

Author Web Sites:
1. James McBride's Web Site : McBride provides information about himself and his books.

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
1573222127
1573229717 : Paperback
006009320X : Cassette - Audio
0060093188 : Cassette - Audio
0060093196 : CD - Audio
158724473X : Hardcover - Large Print
0736684999 : Cassette - Audio
0736685154 : CD - Audio

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20020320
• TID: 067997

Champion, The

Author: Gee, Maurice, 1931-

In 1943 twelve-year-old Rex sees his quiet New Zealand village dramatically changed by the arrival of a Black American soldier on leave from the war.

New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1993, 212 p.

School Library Journal Review: Gr 6-9-Rex Pascoe looks back on his childhood in New Zealand during World War II, when Jackson Coop, a black American soldier wounded in battle, stays with his family for two weeks as he recuperates. Rex's sister Gloria; his open-minded poet mother; and likable but scheming father welcome Jack with open arms, but it takes time for the then 12-year-old Rex to overcome his racial prejudice. The boy also resents that "his soldier" falls short of his image of a fearless hero, but he eventually joins his family and classmates in helping Jack cope with the racially motivated hostility of two American soldiers and of suspicious New Zealanders. The private finally goes AWOL, setting in motion a fast-paced, tragic climax. The man's fear of the war and his ironic views of his black identity ring true, but he's so kind, generous, and sensitive that he seems saintly compared to the mere mortals who surround him. Strong secondary characters give the story depth, and young readers are exposed to a vivid picture of another place and time. (Some may be offended by the narrator's casual use of the word "Jap," but it's historically accurate.) Readers who overlook the simplistic portrait of Jack as a veritable paragon of virtue will find an involving, action-packed novel filled with well-developed characters.-Jack Forman, Mesa College Library, San Diego

Publishers Weekly Review: In the vein of Summer of My German Soldier , this World War II novel traces the growing friendship between a young New Zealander and an American private on leave. Twelve-year-old Rex, who has spent a considerable amount of time fantasizing about battlefield heroics, is sorely disappointed to find that the soldier who is to stay in his home for two weeks is "only" a low-ranking black. Private Jackson Coop is not well received by the bigoted adults of Kettle Creek, but his sharp wit, honesty and gentle nature win him the affection of many children in the small community. After an incident at school, in which Jack gets the better of a cruel teacher, even Rex cannot help admiring the reluctant soldier from the Chicago slums. As it grows increasingly complex, this book sheds light onto the darkest sides of war, and the personal tragedies of its sharply defined characters will touch readers from all walks of life. Particularly memorable are Rex's eccentric grandparents; his father, whose dealings with the black market are a source of humor as well as tension; and two children, Dawn and Leo, who are perhaps the most sensitive to Private Coop's deep sadness. Wrought with as much intelligence as heart, this tender story can be savored many times. Ages 10-14. (Oct.)

Kirkus Reviews In New Zealand in 1943, wounded American GIs were invited to local homes to convalesce. Drawing on his own boyhood, Gee depicts the dramatic, ultimately tragic, events surrounding the visit of one such soldier: Private Jackson Coop. "Jack" is nothing like the enemy-destroying hero that 12-year-old Rex Pascoe has conjured up after reading simplistic pulp fiction: he's courteous, quiet, kind--and black, which elicits enmity from several locals (though their own policeman is a Maori) and especially from two other GIs, Ozark rednecks. In a skillfully plotted sequence involving two more children (half-Maori Dawn and Croatian Leo, both also butts of prejudice), Rex comes to admire and finally to love Jack; in the end, after Jack goes AWOL rather than fight the rednecks, Rex and the others try to help him escape. Jack himself comprises too many clichªs to be a fully realized character (he's musically and physically gifted, with street smarts learned in a Chicago slum), but he's an admirable one, well suited to contrast with Rex's superhero ideal--as well as with his flawed father Alf ("gabby tricky Dad, my crooked dad") and his shady deals. A lively, idiosyncratic cast keeps the story moving; and while it's less intensely suspenseful than Gee's The Fire-Raiser (1992), it's another likable, thoughtful examination of wartime pressures and prejudices in a small, vividly portrayed New Zealand community. (Fiction. 10-14)
(Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 1993)

Author Web Sites:
1. About Maurice Gee : A biography of Gee and a discussion of some of his works.

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0671865617

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• School Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 078312

Liberation road: a novel of World War II and the Red Ball Express
David L. Robbins

Author: Robbins, David L., 1954-

In the wake of the D-Day invasion, as American forces face a lack of supplies, the Red Ball Express, primarily manned by African American troops, becomes a lifeline to soldiers battling to end the war.

New York: Bantam Books, 2005, 445 p.

Publishers Weekly Review: In his latest WWII novel, Robbins powerfully integrates the theme of racial bigotry from Scorched Earth with the successful formula of his previous three combat novels (The End of War, etc.). The 688th Truck Battalion is part of the famed Red Ball Express, which struggles to supply the fast-moving combat following D-Day as American forces fight through the French hedgerows and villages toward Paris. In recounting the battalion's heroic saga, Robbins's tale unfolds from several perspectives—that of Ben Kahn, an aging Jewish army chaplain from Pittsburgh, who fought as a doughboy in the trenches in WWI; Joe Amos, a young, black, college-educated truck driver; and "White Dog," a shadowy, corrupt downed B-17 pilot profiteering on the black market in German-occupied Paris. Bolstered by desperate hope he might find his son—a B-17 pilot shot down over France—Kahn lands on Omaha Beach five days after D-Day and hitches a ride to the front on a GI two-and-a-half ton Jimmy (GMC truck) with Amos. Both men are quickly seasoned by the horrors of war as Kahn heads for a showdown in Paris and Amos makes sergeant and finds romance with a Frenchwoman after shooting down a German plane. Although this isn't quite up to the standard of Robbins's best work—it's occasionally slowed by overwriting and repetition—it's a fine effort from an ambitious storyteller. Agent, Tracy Fisher at William Morris. (Jan. 4)
— Staff (Reviewed November 29, 2004) (Publishers Weekly, vol 251, issue 48, p21)

Library Journal Review: In the months following the Normandy invasion of 1944, 6000 trucks and 23,000 men (the Red Ball Express) shuttled hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies between the beachheads and the front lines. Without these supplies, the Allied advance would have stopped short; the war, brutal enough as it was, would have been longer and even more costly. The heroes of Robbins's (The End of War) novel are neither the generals nor the front-line soldiers. Instead, they include a driver on the Red Ball Express who wants fiercely to fight on the front lines but is denied the opportunity because he's black and a burnout army rabbi who cannot perceive a caring God in the horror that surrounds him. Except for the last 50 pages, this plot device works, especially when Robbins describes the everyday grind of his protagonists' lives. Overall, a commendable though not essential addition to the literature of World War II; recommended for general collections.???David Keymer, Modesto, CA --David Keymer (Reviewed December 15, 2004) (Library Journal, vol 129, issue 20, p112)

Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ In the seven months after Omaha Beach, a lot of WWII was in the hands of the wild and crazy guys who drove the Red Ball Express.

Supplies. The hard-charging American armies chasing the Germans east needed everything: bullets, gas, medicine, rations, shoelaces—and it was up to Joe Amos and his truck-jockey buddies to "red ball" the stuff to the front lines wherever the front lines happened to be. It's through the precociously perceptive eyes of Joe Amos Biggs, barely 20, from rural Danville, Virginia, African-American (as were most of those buddies) that we watch much of the story unfold. But certainly not all. Sharing the burden—and differing as sharply from Joe Amos's as they do from one another's—are two additional points of view. Captain Ben Kahn, army chaplain, a rabbi, is a veteran of WWI. No rabbi back then but a murderously proficient infantryman, he'd played a savage part in the bloody battles, a self-acknowledged killing machine. It's the gore on his hands that turned him toward God and the desperate hope of redemption. Now, tirelessly, bitterly, "the old soldier in him " contends with the rabbi—the victories short-lived and alternating. And then there's the enigma they call Chien Blanc, the heroic bomber pilot who is also an unregenerate black-marketeer. Shot down, he'd chosen to sneak into German-occupied Paris, where he'd made a good thing out of chronic deprivation and pervasive misery. Is he the one Rabbi Kahn—for reasons as complex as they are compelling—has been searching for? The war goes on, and, despite its gargantuan proportions, the three manage to connect, peripherally and yet with such shattering impact.

Once again, Robbins (Last Citadel, 2003, etc.)—emerging as the Homer of WWII—re-creates the mighty drama in all its deadly beauty.
(Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2004)

Author Web Sites:
1. David L. Robbins' Web Site : Robbins provides information about himself and his books.

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0553801759
055338175X : Paperback

Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20050720
• TID: 135206

Sable doughboys, The

Author: Willard, Tom

After Augustus Talbot serves in the Spanish-American War with his sons, the sons attend Officer Candidate School so that they can lead African American troops in France during World War I.

New York: Forge, 1997, 319 p.

Booklist Review: Following Buffalo Soldiers (1996), the first volume in a series of novels about the history of blacks in the U.S. military, comes the second installment, which deals with soldiers in World War I. David and Adrian Sharps are admitted to officers training school in preparation for leading black divisions in the dreadful struggle taking place on trench-filled and blood-drenched European soil. After their instruction and preparation, the two brothers are dispatched certainly not to the glories but to the gore of France, where slaughter of soldiers is the current name of the game. One brother returns stateside; the other one does not. The story of David and Adrian is not only the story of the alive-one-minute-but-perhaps-dead-the-next plight of every doughboy but also of the added weight of discrimination based on the color of their skin. Despite awkward phrasing and stilted dialogue, the narrative is grounded in authentic historic detail and moves with entertaining flow. For all readers of popular fiction with historical and sociological underpinnings. ((Reviewed February 15, 1997)) -- Brad Hooper

Other titles associated with this book:
Doughboys

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0312860404
0812551060 : Paperback - Mass Market
0613290461 : Glued Binding
0606196692 : DEMCO Turtleback
0756906539 : Glued Binding

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• American Historical Fiction: An Annotated Guide to Novels for Adults and Young Adults, published by Oryx Press
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 007703

Chocolate soldier, A: a novel

Author: Colter, Cyrus

Meshach Barry tells about his friend Cager, who killed a white woman during the 1940s and was later murdered in segregated and intolerant Tennessee.

Publishers Weekly Review: Colter takes on a formidable task with this novel. He unveils his denouement in the first chaptera "highly agitated, confused, country black boy" nicknamed Cager will kill a "highborn old white woman," then takes several hundred pages of admittedly "verbose" narration by Cager's friend, a preacher named Meshach Barry, to arrive at the murder. He shifts scenes almost compulsively, from a poor, rural black community to an upwardly mobile black university in a small Tennessee town, from a blues nightclub to a prison for white-collar criminals (Meshach serves time for "mishandling" federal educational funds.) With his vivid characterizations and eye for detail, Colter creates an engrossing, disturbing and enlightening fiction about black power and powerlessness. In his plot and his psychological insights, he purposely echoes Wright's Native Son, Ellison's Invisible Man and Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment. But this ambitious work falls short on several counts: at times the narrative plods, the numerous characters and scene changes are distracting, and the story of Meshach Barry, presented as a subplot, pales beside the passionate tale of Cager. Colter (The Beach Umbrella), an emeritus professor at Northwestern University, is an attorney. Portions of this novel were previously published in TriQuarterly. (May)

Library Journal Review: Dealing out episodes ``like a poker hand,'' this novel is the confession of former preacher Meshach Barry and canonization of ``Cager'' Lee, the unrivaled student he meets at a black Tennessee college in the 1940s. In ``a pastiche or potpourri of ever-escalating incidents'' that include a religious snake handling, the idealistic Cager builds a small paramilitary force guided by a twisted vision of redemption. Colter's ambitious if verbose novel reveals even in its most innocuous of moments the true battles of a chocolate soldier: Cager alighting from train which, because he's black, slows but never quite stops, or observing German POW's waiting in a cafeteria he can't enter. Peter Bricklebank, City Coll., CUNY

Kirkus Reviews Colter (The Beach Umbrella, The Rivers of Eros, Night Studies, The Hippodrome) gives us an old-fashioned novel of good and evil, told by a narrator who doesn't care whether he's liked, just so long as he is heard. Meshach Barry left a small East Texas town and headed off to a black college in Tennessee during the Jim Crow 40's to fulfill his mother's dream that he become "an upstanding, cultured minister." But Barry is a hypocrite and opportunist--one who later achieves success as the Dean of Chapel at a prestigious white university but meets his professional downfall by misusing federal funds, and his personal downfall by seducing his own daughter. His own story emerges only obliquely--Barry is more concerned (or, rather, obsessed) with telling the tale of his college friend Rollo Ezekiel Lee ("Cager"), who dreams of forming a black army of resistance and spends his short, painfully confused life trying to perfect his strength and thereby his soul. Cager is a hero to Barry in spite of--or because of--his murder of a doyenne of white Southern racist respectability (a lady so proud that she won't even bend her knees to God, but prays sitting straight in her Hepplewhite chair) in a moment of insanity or inspiration. Barry (who emerges as a much more convincing character than his hero) sees his own crimes as those of an insect; Cager's crimes were those of a man. This moral vision is meant to trouble, not to persuade, presented in often dense prose, language that sometimes exasperates but mostly works well: Barry revels in Biblical cadences, in revealing his erudition as well as exposing his own phoniness and self-disgust. A cold, hard book to like--and many people won't--but at times offering a compelling fascination.
(Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 1988)

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0810150387 : Paperback - University Press
0938410423 : Hardcover
0938410490 : Paperback

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• American Historical Fiction: An Annotated Guide to Novels for Adults and Young Adults, published by Oryx Press
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 021053

Farewell to the mockingbirds

Author: McEachin, James

Encino, CA: Rhari, 1997, 512 p.
Publishers Weekly Review: Inspired by the true story of the all-black, all-volunteer 24th Infantry Regiment, Company K, McEachin's second novel (after Tell Me a Tale) is a riveting account of one of the most disgraceful chapters in American military history. In 1917 the U.S. entered WWI--but while troops were heading to France, another war was about to erupt in Texas. The men of the 24th Infantry Regiment (Colored) were all volunteers, and Company K was the best outfit in the regiment, thanks largely to the leadership and discipline of Sgt. Obie McLellan. Yet the segregated Army sent the unit to a post near Houston noted for its miserable conditions. When the Houston police ignited a race riot in town, leaving many black soldiers dead, wounded or in jail, McLellan led the enraged men of Company K in a revolt against their continual mistreatment from the police and their white officers. Company K armed itself and marched into Houston to even the score and rescue their jailed comrades. The resulting court-martial produced the largest mass trial in U.S. military history: more than 100 black soldiers were charged with murder, mutiny and other capital crimes. To appease angry Southerners, the Army promised convictions and executions; perjury, blackmail, coercion and flagrant disregard for the Constitution made a mockery of military justice. McEachin's story is a tragic commentary made even more compelling by his astute portrayal of the soldiers (called mockingbirds by the prosecution) and officers involved. Despite occasionally overwrought prose, he brings the fate of Company K hauntingly to life. (Sept.) FYI: Film and TV actor McEachin received his basic military training with Company K, 24th U.S. Infantry Regiment during the Korean War.

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
096566190
0965666190 : Hardcover

Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 044277

Such sweet thunder
Vincent O. Carter ; foreword by Herbert R. Lottman

Author: Carter, Vincent O.

Follows Amerigo Jones from his boyhood in Kansas City, Missouri, surrounded by loving parents, a vibrant African American community, and big band jazz, through his service in World War II and life as an expatriate, as he comes to terms with racism.

South Royalton, Vt.: Steerforth Press, c2003, 537 p.

Booklist Review: /*Starred Review*/ Amerigo Jones is a young foot soldier in World War II, fighting in France, when a friend offers him a French girl who is sleeping with black soldiers. The occasion prompts the dreamy young man to drift back into his childhood and memories of Cosima, the love of his youth. The reader is treated to vivid recollections of life in the alley dwellings of pre-World War II Kansas City. For Amerigo and his parents, it is a life of poverty constricted even further by racial discrimination. But it is also a life of joy and the slow, steady rhythms of family, neighborhood, and church. Amerigo remembers the exhilaration of running with some bad kids, breaking out of the confines of the backyard, and the ecstasy in church of voices blending into “One Great Voice.” The newspapers and neighborhood are full of news of Satchel Paige and the NAACP’s efforts to end lynching, as young Amerigo dreams beyond the boundaries of racism. Carter, author of The Bern Book (1973), a memoir of his life of self-imposed exile, wrote this novel in 1963. The book wasn’t published because it didn’t fit the mold of black literature in the 1960s. Readers will appreciate its dreamy, nostalgic quality and lyrical writing, which evokes urban life before the war and offers a stirring portrait of a young boy growing up.
(Reviewed April 1, 2003) -- Vanessa Bush

Publishers Weekly Review: /* Starred Review */ Written in 1963 and shelved, this hefty, astonishing novel by a black American expatriate who died in 1983 tells—in electric modernist vernacular prose—the story of a black child's life in Jim Crow America. In France during WWII, soldier Amerigo Jones thinks back on his youth in the 1920s and '30s in a black community resembling the author's native Kansas City. At first, the members of his extended family are presented as a chorus of voices fading in and out: his lovely, luxury-craving mother, Viola; his stern, dapper bellhop father, Rutherford; his grandmother and a bevy of aunts. After this short stream-of-consciousness section, the novel settles into a fluent, easy chronological narrative weighted toward the dreamy, determined Amerigo's early childhood, but stretching all the way to his graduation from high school. Through a steady accumulation of detail ("Five o'clock. Supper: hot dog sandwiches, salad, and beer for them and strawberry soda-pop for him"), sustained lyricism ("Fat round A's, B's, and C's spread out over the ruled spaces of his mind"), flights of fancy ("And he was the Swan Prince! 'Wauk! Wauk!' He cried plaintively, his heart beating violently") and, especially, reams of swinging dialogue (" 'A man reads this paper an' gits fightin' mad! Waitaminute!' "), Carter paints an uncommonly rich picture of black American family life in the early 20th century. Like the composition it is named for, a Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn tribute to Shakespeare, it is a marvelous blend of jazz rhythms and high literary tradition. (Apr. 15)
— Staff (Reviewed March 17, 2003) (Publishers Weekly, vol 250, issue 11, p52)

Library Journal Review: Completed in 1963 by an American expatriate living in Switzerland, this portrait of an African American childhood in Depression-era Kansas City, MO, has only now been published, 20 years after the author's death. Carter follows the life of Amerigo Jones from infancy to his last year in high school, during which he is dominated by his attractive but sometimes foolish mother, Viola; his strict, hard-working father, Rutherford; and his first love, Cosima, who chooses wealth and position over Amerigo's devotion. Amerigo's journey is surreal at first, as the voices of his childhood float in and out of consciousness, blurring his early years. Infused with the sounds and spirit of Kansas City jazz, the narrative becomes more traditional as Amerigo grows older and his family must face the hardships of poverty and the overt and rampant racism of 1930s America. The author's gritty style was ahead of its time, which may be why the book languished in obscurity for so long. While the length and confusing first pages may intimidate some readers, those that stay will find a satisfying read. For most public libraries.—Ellen Flexman, Indianapolis–Marion Cty. P.L., IN (Reviewed January 15, 2003) (Library Journal, vol 128, issue 1, p152)

Kirkus Reviews Evoking African-American childhood uniquely and on a grand scale, Carter's long-vanished magnum opus, for which he first sought a publisher in 1963, finally finds its worthy way into print 20 years after his death.

Amerigo Jones is a young and innocent black soldier in France during WWII, when the prospect of spending a night of guard duty with a willing French girl triggers a memory of the one he left behind in Kansas City, and all his childhood comes washing over him like a riptide, pulling him back. From the beginning, his family and neighbors had special plans for him; although they lived in one of the poorest (but integrated) parts of the city during the middle of the Depression, Amerigo was brought up by his hardworking mother and father, Viola and Rutherford—only 16 themselves when their baby was born—to do the right thing. Being left alone all day while still too young to go to school did result in a day of misadventure, culminating in a trip with a gang of other kids to a soup kitchen, but when school began Amerigo took to it like a pearl to an oyster. With many of the same teachers his parents had, he impresses people, including the editor of the weekly black newspaper, whom he tells that he wants to grow up to be president. As years pass and many of the neighbors move on, he and his family remain, never far from the edge of poverty but still proud. Amerigo, a witness to murder, mayhem, and every seamy side of human nature, alters his vision of the future somewhat while still aiming high. But when he gets to high school—as the drums of war beat ever louder—he learns the bitter limits of his ambition.

In need of some editorial trimming and polishing, perhaps, but this diamond in the rough is still an extraordinarily honest and compassionate child's-eye view of a world too seldom seen in American fiction.
(Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2003)

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
1586420585
1581952171 : Paperback

Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20030720
• TID: 119519

Fort Pillow: a novel of the Civil War
Harry Turtledove

Author: Turtledove, Harry

A tale based on the events of the controversial 1864 Fort Pillow Massacre traces the Confederacy attack against the mixed-race Union garrison at Fort Pillow, a battle led by ruthless cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest.

New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006, 320 p.

Booklist Review: /*Starred Review*/ In April 1864, the Union garrison at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, consisted of 600 men, more than half of them black and many of the rest Tennessee unionists. They were commanded by Major William Bradford, who had gotten his command by raising regiments. Their position was attacked by General Nathan Bedford Forrest and 1,500 men, many of whom were also Tennesseeans. The Confederates overran the fort, and when the fighting was done, there were 226 Union survivors. Only 62 of the black troops survived unwounded. Major Bradford was killed shortly after being taken prisoner. Exactly what happened has been a subject of controversy from that day to this. An immediate congressional investigation found that Forrests forces had deliberately murdered the black troops and their officers, and the Fort Pillow Massacre became a rallying cry for Union victory. The investigations report, however, contains several errors of fact. Accounts of Forrests campaigns written by Confederate sympathizers after the war maintain that Forrests troops only fought--they didnt massacre--the Union troops. Turtledoves most impressive novel uses known facts and persons and extremely plausible extrapolations to paint a picture of one of Americas least glorious affrays. After reading it, one is convinced that it happened that way. Turtledove also depicts the people of the time and place very vividly, making the novel a true window into history. -- Frieda Murray (Reviewed 04-01-2006) (Booklist, vol 102, number 15, p21)

Library Journal Review: This is noted sf and alternate history author Turtledove???s first foray into a ???straight??? historical novel. Grim but riveting, it describes what many consider one of the worst atrocities of the Civil War???the 1864 killing of black Union soldiers and their white officers by Confederates at Fort Pillow. Enraged that blacks would take up arms, 1500 Confederates under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked the 600-man Fort Pillow garrison, whose troops fought back savagely, further enraging the Confederates. When the fort was finally overrun, the killing continued, with racial hatreds exploding into mindless fury that Forrest felt unable, and unwilling, to stop. Later, the scope of the ???Fort Pillow Massacre??? was exaggerated and used as a rallying cry for the Union, while the Confederacy steadfastly denied that any such massacre occurred. Turtledove???s narrative leaves no doubt that he believes something terrible happened at Fort Pillow, and is an excellent companion to his many alternate histories of the period. Recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/06.]???Robert Conroy, Warren, MI --Robert Conroy (Reviewed May 1, 2006) (Library Journal, vol 131, issue 8, p84)

Author Web Sites:
1. Harry Turtledove's Web Site : Turtledove provides information about himself, his books, answers to frequently asked questions, a discussion list for fans and a list of awards he's won.

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0312355203

Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Added to NoveList: 20060520
• TID: 142330

Seven six one

Author: Borden, G. F.

Burning Gate Press, copyright 1991, 417p.
Publishers Weekly Review: In the opening of this engrossing WW II novel set in Germany in 1945, the unarmed narrator and his tough, enigmatic first sergeant pull on rubber gloves and boots and enter the burned hulk of a U.S. tank to scrape up the remains of its crew to identify them for the medics. Shortly thereafter, the narrator witnesses the first sergeant execute a soldier who raped and disfigured a young woman in a nearby village. These two extraordinary undertakings are deemed necessary in fear that the dead soldiers might otherwise be ignored and that the rapist's crimes might be used to discredit their entire unit--the 761st tank battalion, comprised entirely of black soldiers who must fight not only the German enemy but the widely held expectation that they will fail under fire. Basing his story on the exploits of the actual 761st tankers, Borden ( Easter Day, 1941 ) writes of men at war on two fronts, conveying the racial implications in highly effective, understated prose. In meticulous and powerfully repetitive detail, he paints a gruesome picture of soldiers who understand that their actions have meaning far beyond the horrifying time and place in which they find themselves. This is a gripping, unforgettable novel. (Jan.)

Library Journal Review: The 761st, America's first all-black tank regiment, is struggling to survive and maintain its pride and dedication as World War II winds down. Their job is made especially hard by their suspicion that the rest of the Army has little use for them, and their fear of the Germans is overwhelmed by their anxiety about letting their people down. Borden's ( Easter Day, 1941 , LJ 3/15/87) device of never mentioning the race of the characters is perhaps too cute, and these people never seem to stop thinking noble thoughts. But the powerful war stories that emerge and the perseverance of the 761st in pursuit of a greater goal than the war overcome the romanticism. Recommended for military fiction and black studies collections.-- Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army TRALINET Ctr., Fort Monroe, Va.

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
1878179039 : Hardcover

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 016267

Bombingham: a novel
Anthony Grooms

Author: Grooms, Anthony

A soldier in Vietnam becomes sucked into the Civil Rights movement through a letter written home to the parents of a friend killed in Birmingham's early 1960s wave of racially motivated violence.

New York: Free Press, c2001, vii, 304 p.

Booklist Review: As a group of black soldiers trek across a rice field in an unnamed year during the Vietnam War, banter about home triggers for one soldier, Walter Burke, a Proustlike recollection of his not-so-distant past growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, at the dawn of the civil rights movement. Birmingham, Walter points out to his friends, was dubbed “Bombingham” by the city’s black residents for the infamous Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing and other acts of terrorism by the Ku Klux Klan. A torrent of memories quickly follows: joys of early childhood freedom, the sharp sting of first encounters with virulent racists, and his mother’s long battle with cancer that brings the family to the verge of disintegration. The family crisis is the center of Grooms’ novel, placing the momentous civil rights battles in the background. The effect is convincing, reinforcing the idea that a child takes a small perspective of the world at large. The result is a captivating and unsentimental recollection of daily life in the segregated South.
(Reviewed August 1, 2001) -- Ted Leventhal

School Library Journal Review: Adult/High School–Walter Burke, a foot soldier serving in Vietnam, is trying to write a letter to the family of a friend who has been killed, but he can't find the right words. Memories triggered, he veers from the horrors of the present to those of his past as a black child in Alabama at the dawn of the civil rights movement. All mental paths lead to an examination of violence (sometimes graphically portrayed). Though the narrative returns to Vietnam periodically, this is chiefly the story of a period in Walter's childhood in Birmingham, whose black residents have dubbed "Bombingham" in recognition of the KKK's preferred method of attack there. Walter may be seeing an epic struggle, but he is young and his view is artless: he simply notes that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "spoke encouragingly" to the crowd; and when he sees Dr. Abernathy arrested, he is most troubled by the lack of respect shown the man. His worldview is dominated by his family life; that, too, is in crisis, and his best friend leads him into every sort of trouble, including dangerous encounters with police at demonstrations. Some readers will be frustrated by the novel's slow accretion of detail and meandering plot, but those who can adjust to the pace of the protagonist's thoughtful inner life will come to know and like him, and have a vivid and memorable experience of his world.–Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA (Reviewed March 1, 2002) (School Library Journal, vol 48, issue 3, p260)

Publishers Weekly Review: /* Starred Review */ At the center of Grooms's riveting first novel is Walter Burke, a black American soldier in Vietnam who is attempting to compose a letter to the parents of one of his fallen comrades. The bulk of the novel occurs in flashback, focusing on Walter's turbulent adolescence in Tittusville, the Birmingham suburb where he lived with his parents and younger sister, Josie. (The title refers to violence surrounding the civil rights movement.) Walter's parents, who refuse to participate in boycotts and rallies, try to shield the children from the turmoil stoked by redneck police commissioner (and rumored KKK grand dragon) Bull Connor. But when their mother is diagnosed with brain cancer, things begin to fall apart. Choosing religion over medicine, their mother deteriorates rapidly—both mentally and physically—and their exasperated father, a teacher and staunch advocate of "thinking scientifically," begins a corresponding descent into alcoholism, eventually leaving home to live in a motel. Encouraged by Walter's best friend, Lamar Burrell, and Lamar's activist mother, Walter and Josie find themselves at the front lines of the struggle for civil rights, secretly attending meetings, going to demonstrations led by Martin Luther King Jr., and ultimately facing police dogs and fire hoses. Whether describing the daily indignities of life under Jim Crow laws or the ignorance and brutality of the men who enforce them, Grooms writes with grace and clarity, never resorting to sentimentality or gratuitous button-pushing. Though Walter contends that "the world is a tumultuous place and every soul in it suffers," Grooms confronts this suffering head-on, showing that hope and dignity sometimes can be reclaimed in the process. This is a powerful, important debut. (Oct. 1)
— Staff (Reviewed September 24, 2001) (Publishers Weekly, vol 248, issue 39, p66)

Library Journal Review: Poet and short-story writer Grooms (Trouble No More) has written a moving novel about the destruction of hope. Narrator Walter recalls being swept up with his sister in the Civil Rights marches in Birmingham at a time when their mother lay dying of cancer and their father drifted into alcoholism. As Walter awakened to the hopes and dreams of freedom through the teachings of the Civil Rights leaders, his own ability to dream and hope withered with the physical death of his mother and the spiritual death of his father. Walter looks back on this period of his life from the midst of the carnage of the Vietnam War, in which he is both victim and perpetrator. Although apparently callous to the deaths surrounding him, he is troubled by his lack of emotions. Retracing his past offers no answers and no healing. Grooms provides a vivid picture of the heady and confusing days of the fight for civil rights in Birmingham, the historical conditions of racism accompanied by arbitrary death and violence, and a young boy spiritually wounded by social injustice, violence, and the disintegration of his family. Highly recommended for all libraries.—Rebecca Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA (Reviewed August 1, 2001) (Library Journal, vol 126, issue 13, p161)

Kirkus Reviews An engaging though loosely woven debut about an African-American boy who experiences the death of his mother—and the words of Martin Luther King—in the same year.
Walter Burke trudges toward a village in Vietnam and watches a pair of friends die in a firefight. Composing a letter to their families turns his thoughts to his turbulent youth in Birmingham, Alabama. Flashing back, Grooms, an award-winning short-story writer, poet, and essayist, does a lovely job of sketching such timeless aspects of Walter's and his friend Lamar's boyhood as their search for specimens to examine under Lamar's microscope, even as he nails the details of institutionalized racism in the 1960s. As children, Walter and his sister Josie share as their most pressing concern the declining health of their mother Clara, who refuses to seek medical assistance. It seems Clara has adopted a fatalist's stance toward her cancer—driven, Walter suspects, by her memory of her own father's senseless death years ago on trumped-up charges of raping a white woman. Her frustrated husband Carl finds solace in area bars. Meanwhile, civil rights marches, boycotts, and protests gather force. Grooms vividly evokes these stirring events, as well as Walter's cruel experiences at the receiving end of police brutality; the boy's cathartic transformation during a particularly brutal assault is especially persuasive. Then Aunt Bennie comes from Philadelphia to help her sister Clara, Josie is dragged into jail after her dog is viciously killed by a police canine, Clara dies, Carl is never reconciled to her death, and Walter ships out for Vietnam—which returns us to Bombingham's opening scene.
Powerfully crafted individual moments and honestly drawn emotions, but first-timer Grooms can't quite synthesize them into a unified whole.
(Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2001)

Other related features:

1. Awards (Best Fiction) - Young Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary -> Booklist Editors' Choice -> Adult Fiction for Young Adults -> 2001

2. Book Discussion Guide - Four Spirits

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0743205588
0345452933 : Paperback

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• School Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 065974

Pink and Say
Patricia Polacco

Author: Polacco, Patricia

Fifteen-year-old Say Curtis, a wounded Union soldier, describes his meeting with Pinkus Aylee, an African-American soldier, after a Civil War battle in Georgia, and their subsequent capture by Southern troops. Based on a true story about the author's great-great-grandfather.

New York: Philomel Books, c1994, 1 v. (unpaged)

Booklist Review: Books for Youth, For the Young: Ages 5-9. Hands and gestures have always been important in Polacco's work. Here they are at the center of a picture book based on a true incident in the author's own family history. It's a story of interracial friendship during the Civil War between two 15-year-old Union soldiers. Say, who is white and poor, tells how he is rescued by Pinkus (Pink), who carries the wounded Say back to the Georgia home where Pink's black family were slaves. In a kind of idyllic interlude, Pink and his mother nurse Say back to health, and Pink teaches his friend to read; but before they can leave, marauders kill Pink's mother and drag the boys to Andersonville prison. Pink is hanged, but Say survives to tell the story and pass it on across generations. The figure of Pink's mother borders on the sentimental, but the boys' relationship is beautifully drawn. Throughout the story there are heartbreaking images of people torn from a loving embrace. Pictures on the title and copyright pages show the parallel partings as each boy leaves his family to go to war. At the end, when the friends are wrenched apart in prison, the widening space between their outstretched hands expresses all the sorrow of the war. Then, in a powerful double-page spread, they are able to clasp hands for a moment, and their union is like a rope. Say once shook Lincoln's hand, just as Say held Pink's hand, and Say tells his children, who tell theirs, that they have touched the hand that touched the hand . . . ((Reviewed September 1, 1994)) -- Hazel Rochman

School Library Journal Review: Gr 4 Up-This picture book set during the Civil War is a departure for Polacco in terms of content and audience. It is certainly the deepest and most serious book she has done. Sheldon Curtis, 15, a white boy, lies badly wounded in a field in Georgia when Pinkus Aylee, an African American Union soldier about Sheldon's age, finds him and carries him home to his mother, Moe Moe Bay. Sheldon, known as Say, is nursed back to health in her nurturing care. But then she is killed by marauders, and the boys return to their units. They are then captured and taken to Andersonville, where Pink is hanged within hours of their capture. One of the most touching moments is when Pink reads aloud from the Bible to Moe Moe and Say. Say tells them that he can't read, but then he offers something he's very proud of: he once shook Abraham Lincoln's hand. This is a central image in the story, and is what ties the boys together for a final time, as Pink cries, "`Let me touch the hand that touched Mr. Lincoln, Say, just one last time.'" The picture of their clasped hands, with the hands of the soldiers wrenching them apart, is exceptionally moving. Polacco's artwork, in fact, has never been better. She uses dramatic perspectives, dynamic compositions, and faces full of emotion to carry her powerful tale. History comes to life in this remarkable book.-Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL

Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ A white youth from Ohio, Sheldon Russell Curtis (Say), and a black youth from Georgia, Pinkus Aylee (Pink), meet as young soldiers with the Union army. Pink finds Say wounded in the leg after a battle and brings him home with him. Pink's mother, Moe Moe Bay, cares for the boys while Say recuperates, feeding and comforting them and banishing the war for a time. Whereas Pink is eager to go back and fight against "the sickness" that is slavery, Say is afraid to return to his unit. But when he sees Moe Moe Bay die at the hands of marauders, he understands the need to return. Pink and Say are captured by Confederate soldiers and brought to the notorious Andersonville prison camp. Say is released months later, ill and undernourished, but Pink is never released, and Polacco reports that he was hanged that very first day because he was black. Polacco (Babushka Baba Yaga, 1993, etc; My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother, above) tells this story, which was passed down for generations in her family (Say was her great-great-grandfather), carefully and without melodrama so that it speaks for itself. The stunning illustrations -- reminiscent of the German expressionist Egon Shiele in their use of color and form -- are completely heartbreaking. A spectacular achievement.
(Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 1994)

Wings of honor

Author: Willard, Tom

Recounts the exploits of Augustus Sharps, Jr., who continues his family's military tradition when, during World War II, he becomes one of the Black combat pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen

Booklist Review: In book three of the Black Sabre Chronicles, young Samuel Sharps enrolls at Tuskeegee Institute in Alabama, determined to become one of the first black officers in the Army Air Corps. Proudly following in the military tradition of his grandfather, a legendary cavalry officer, and his father, a veteran of the Great War, Samuel feels duty bound to continually challenge the restrictions placed on black men in the segregated armed forces. When the U.S. becomes involved in World War II, Samuel and the other members of the all-black 99th Pursuit Squadron fly an unprecedented number of successful bomber missions, suffering fewer casualties and garnering more decorations than almost any other unit on the European front. Willard artfully blends the details of an absorbing individual story with a vivid panorama of gut-wrenching combat scenes. Another admirable, action-packed addition to a compelling multigenerational series that catalogs the incredibly heroic, and often overlooked, contributions of black soldiers to the history of the American military. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 1999)) -- Margaret Flanagan

Publishers Weekly Review: Willard's third entry in his Black Sabre Chronicles (after The Sable Doughboys and Buffalo Soldiers) explores with accuracy and feeling the historical plight of four generations of a black family in the U.S. military. Willard focuses here on the sharpshooting men and hardscrabble women of the Sharps family, who range from ex-slaves to successful Arizona ranchers to soldiers in WWI and Tuskegee airmen in WWII. Selona Sharps is the grandmother and early pioneer on the Arizona ranch; scalped and raped as a girl by Texas Rangers, her strength and stoicism are inherited by her two sons, David and Adrian, who are both casualties of WWI. Hannah, Adrian's wife, is an ex-slave who wrestles free of Florida bigotry to settle in Arizona and run a restaurant; Samuel, her second son, is accepted into Tuskegee Institute and becomes part of the legendary first Negro squadron, the Black Red-Tail Angels, which flew against the Nazis. Willard's portraits are drawn swiftly, in an understated style, delineating military battles, personal trials and romantic attachments in the same straightforward prose. This capsule history of blacks in the military clearly captures the climate of racial antagonism that they endured. While the lives of the Sharps forebears are romanticized, often stalled in stilted prose, the later description of Samuel's sons in combat in Vietnam (the author is himself a vet of the war) are highly effective. (Jan.)

Kirkus Reviews Book Three of the Black Sabre Chronicles, Vietnam vet Willard's 19th novel, carries on an engrossing generational saga about blacks in the military. Buffalo Soldiers (1995) told of black trooper Augustus Sharps (a crack shot named after the long rifle), who's fighting Native Americans and white marauders with the post—Civil War Tenth Cavalry, earns a sergeant major's stripes, and marries the scalped Selona. Augustus's two sons, Adrian and David, go off to OCS; in The Sable Doughboys (1997), they—re holed up in segregated training camps before being posted as lieutenants to the 93rd Division's 372nd Infantry and shipped to France. David dies, while Adrian's son Samuel, in Wings of Honor, endures the famous Tuskegee Experiment of WWII, becomes a pilot, and is sent to fight the Luftwaffe. The story ferries Samuel and his squadron through campaigns in Africa, Sicily, and France as they fly their devil-throated P-40 Warhawks and P-51 Mustangs. These Tuskegee Airmen are also the vanguard who tear down the walls of segregation in the military. Meantime, the wonderfully exciting air battles bear comparison with James Wylie's 1977 Faulknerian classic, The Homestead Grays, about African-Americans of the 1930s who are lighted up by the thunderclap of war to man the secret machines of wizards (prop-driven Mustangs) and at last face Messerschmidt jets over burning Berlin. The first half of the story, however, concerns black life in the States, since the war doesn't come until mid-novel, with Augustus and Selona strongly present. No dimming of the solid style Willard favors.
(Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 1999)

Other related features:

1. Annotated Book List - Name that Aviator!

2. Annotated Book List - Written or Read any Military Novels Lately

Other titles associated with this book:
Honorable wings

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0312869673
0812564774 : Paperback - Mass Market
0756903912 : Glued Binding

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 007704

Incomparable world: a novel

Author: Martin, S. I.

Follows the adventures of three African American rogues in the harsh streets of London in the years after the American Revolution

New York: Braziller, 1998, 213 p.

Publishers Weekly Review: An engagingly slapstick but unfocused debut from a London journalist gains most of its interest from its setting: black London of the 1780s. Having fought for their freedom on the British side during the American Revolution, ex-slaves Buckram, Georgie George and William Supple are promised pensions but instead find dire poverty and misery on the West End. When the novel opens, hapless protagonist Buckram has just been released from jail, having been caught in one of Georgie's habitual bungled schemes. Back on the street, Buckram soon finds himself drawn into more shady business, distributing black pornography, another of hustler Georgie's ideas. "His was an incomparable world," Martin writes of Georgie. "His passion was in having the time of his life and no one could slight his desire"--perhaps the only sane reaction to a world in which he finds himself a victim everywhere. The kicker comes when Georgie involves all three men in the grandest caper of their lives: a scheme to swindle American slave-traders by posing to the consuls at the American embassy as African potentates. In awkward contrast to the madcap aspects of Buckram's tale, Martin draws pathos from the squalor of the poor man's London and the plights of exiles like Supple, who pines for his wife and children in America. With often anachronistic dialogue and attitudes, Martin's romping adventure story succeeds best as the late-20th-century dream of what it was like to be black in a time that turns out not to have been much different from ours. (Aug.)

Library Journal Review: After the American Revolutionary War, blacks who could prove they fought with the British were evacuated with the troops. Among them were Buckram and Georgie, the protagonists of Martin's intriguing if not wholly successful debut. Relegated to the slums of London, Georgie becomes King of the Beggars, fomenting illegal money-making schemes in which Buckram participates. Buckram serves two years in jail for one petty crime, but his only choice upon release is to trust Georgie again. Their next scheme gains Buckram enough money and dignity to leave the slums behind. Martin's characters are not fully developed, and an overabundance of minor figures leads to confusion. Real people appear to be mentioned to impress, serving mainly to show the contrast between the educated and the illiterate, and the British slang will be unfamiliar to American readers. But Martin's debut about a little-known period of African American history reads quickly, is well researched, shows interesting depth, and proves him a writer to watch. For larger fiction collections.--Andrea Lee Shuey, Dallas P.L.

Kirkus Reviews A hectic, often compelling first novel set in a decidedly exotic (and violent) world. Martin, a British journalist, wrings considerable drama from a little-studied element of the American Revolution, when blacks, many of them former slaves and some only recently arrived from Africa, were recruited as soldiers by both sides, playing key roles in several campaigns. In departing, the British offered transport to any black man who could prove that he had fought for the King. Even so, England proved little more accepting of the soldiers than America had been, and the result was a large, embattled, and destitute black population in London. Martin focuses on the fates of three ex-soldiers there: Georgie, a mysterious con man who quickly becomes an influential thief; Buckram, an ex-cavalryman reduced to begging; and William, who makes a slender living on the stage. The author's portrait of the grim underside of late 18th-century London is detailed, grisly, and convincing: the whores, hustlers, thieves, and assassins who populate that feculent underworld are all vividly depicted. William, yearning to rescue the wife and children he left behind in New York, and Buckram, hopelessly in love with a young black woman dedicated to fighting for her race, are tough, complex figures. Georgie, however, remains an enigma, and his yearning (to live in a free black city) is never explained. Much of the slender plot has to do with Georgie's shrewd attempt to swindle a loathsome and very wealthy American slaver, which leads to a climax in the US embassy that mixes guffaws and gore. Each of the three men gets something of what he's desired. But it's for the robust portrait of the horrors of slavery in 18th-century America, and of the sufferings of the down-and-out in London, that Martin's narrative lingers. Despite a plot that often leaps when it should walk, and some patches of too-exuberant prose: an impressive debut--angry, vigorous, and moving.
(Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 1998)

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
080761436X

Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 043104

Stone ponies, The
Tom Willard

Author: Willard, Tom

Continues the saga of the Sharps family of military men and women as it narrates the effects of the controversial Vietnam War on Franklin LeBaron Sharps, a young paratrooper sent to Vietnam in 1965

New York: Forge, 2000, p. cm.

Booklist Review:

In the fourth book of the Black Sabre Chronicles series, Willard continues to recount the often extraordinary personal efforts and professional exploits of five generations of a distinguished African American military family. Unlike his great-grandfather, a legendary cavalry officer; his grandfather, a World War I hero; and his father, an original “Tuskeegee Airman” and the first black brigadier general, young Franklin Sharps initially spurns a career in the military. After his older brother, Adrian, is killed in Vietnam, however, Franklin joins the 101st Airborne Division as a medic. Determined to avenge Adrian's death and to prove his independence to his estranged father, he initially enters the combat arena utterly unprepared for the barbaric cruelty of a bush war. Because the author is himself a veteran of the Vietnam War, the graphic battle scenes feature a gritty, realistic edge. The result is a stirring family saga as well as a compelling look at the controversy surrounding the conflict in Vietnam, especially as it applied to the disproportionate number of black soldiers involved.

(Reviewed September 1, 2000) -- Margaret Flanagan

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0312857632
0812564782 : Paperback - Mass Market
0756910951 : Glued Binding

Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 062477

We look like men of war
William R. Forstchen

Author: Forstchen, William R., 1950-

After Samuel Washburn, born a slave in 1850, and his cousin escape to the North to obtain their freedom, they return to the South to fight in the Civil War, where young Samuel becomes a regimental drummer with a "colored regiment" and witnesses the horrors of war.

New York: Forge, 2001, 188 p.

Booklist Review: Like Tom Willard's Black Sabre Chronicles, this basedinfact narrative recounts the longoverlooked contributions of African American military personnel. Using the Civil War as his venue, Forstchen chronicles the experiences of Sam Washburn, a former slave who returns south to fearlessly fight for freedom. Sam, a member of a “colored regiment,” provides firsthand accounts of several pivotal battle campaigns from the unique perspective of a black man in the predominantly white Union army. Though merely a drummer boy, young Sam manages to play a key role in the disastrous Battle of the Crater. Action and adventure abound in this heartfelt tribute to the heroism of black soldiers during the Civil War.
(Reviewed November 15, 2001) -- Margaret Flanagan

Publishers Weekly Review: What could have been a moving tale of a man's progress from slave to free man to battle-scarred veteran of the Union Army is here reduced to a pedestrian ramble through the Civil War. Samuel Washburn, a slave who grows up on a Kentucky plantation, loses both of his parents by the time he is 12 years old. In the early stages of the war, his master is killed in battle, leaving the master's cruel son Ben—no more than a boy himself—in charge. Sam and his cousin Jim assault Ben in self-defense; believing him dead, they take flight and, with a bounty on their heads, eventually make it to Indiana. They volunteer for a Negro regiment being formed to join the Army of the Potomac in Grant's campaign against Petersburg, Va. Sam's personal narrative builds to the disastrous Battle of the Crater, where conflicts of command not only thwarted a plan that could have ended the war months earlier than it did, but also orchestrated the wholesale slaughter of Federal troops as orders and strategies were countermanded and confused at the last moment. The book, by the author of the Lost Regiment series, is exceedingly well researched; however, Sam's character is unconvincing in vernacular and circumstance. The role of Negro troops in the Civil War is still a subject not fully explored, but the novel descends into a highly idealized and exceedingly narrow history of the intrepid heroics and courage of the men who served and sacrificed themselves for the Union cause. (Dec.)
— Staff (Reviewed October 22, 2001) (Publishers Weekly, vol 248, issue 43, p47)

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0765301148
0765301156 : Paperback
078617739X : CD - Audio
0786175389 : CD - Audio
0786179651 : Audio
0786143525 : Cassette - Audio
0786136502 : Cassette - Audio

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 067494

Uncommon enemy, An
Michelle Black

Author: Black, Michelle

Following the massacre of a village of Cheyenne led by Custer and the Seventh Cavalry, Custer's aide, Captain Brad Randall, is given the task of learning the story and locating the family of a white woman found among the survivors.

New York: Forge, 2001, 398 p.

Publishers Weekly Review: Strong characters, smart narration and a fast-moving plot distinguish this latest historical novel by Black. On November 2, 1868, the Seventh Cavalry wiped out a Cheyenne village on the banks of the Washita River. Though it was referred to by the army as "the Battle of the Washita," Thomas Murphy, superintendent of Indian affairs, believes it was a massacre and resigns in protest. Lieutenant Colonel Custer, then at the beginning of his campaign against the Cheyenne, needs a witness to back his version of the event. As Black's novel begins, he thinks he has found one in a white woman who has survived four years of Indian captivity. Eden Murdoch served as a nurse in the Civil War, then married a handsome soldier, discovering too late that he was a brutal, narrow-minded man. While attempting to escape him, she was abducted by a band of renegade Indian warriors and, after much suffering, rescued by a Cheyenne tribal medicine man, Hanging Road, a young man she came to love. Custer is dismayed to find that she will not denounce her captors as "savages" and, in fact, seems to regard his men as not rescuers but aggressors. He appoints his young captain, Brad Randall, to see if he can learn the facts of Eden's captivity. Randall is a naïve but decent man who comes to understand Eden's respect for the Cheyenne. Black's take on Custer's cruel command is nuanced and well researched, her story of his encounter with Eden based on a cryptic remark Custer made in his field notes the day after Washita. Eden's forthrightness is not always believable —waiting impatiently for a bath in the custody of soldiers, she strips naked in front of them—but her plucky humor makes her an appealing protagonist. (Sept.)
— Staff (Reviewed September 3, 2001) (Publishers Weekly, vol 248, issue 36, p61)

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0765301032
0765340658 : Paperback - Mass Market

Credits:
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Added to NoveList: 20031220
• TID: 121523

Fallen angels

Author: Myers, Walter Dean, 1937-

Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.

School Library Journal Review: Gr 10 Up A riveting account of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a young black soldier. Richie Perry, a 17 year old from Harlem, arrrives in Vietnam in 1967. His first-person narrative provides an immediacy to the events and characters revealed. His experiences become readers' experiences, as do his fears and his insight about this war, any war. "We spent another day lying around. It seemed to be what the war was about. Hours of boredom, seconds of terror." During one of those terrifying times, a large number of American soldiers are killed. Because they cannot be carried back, the decision is made to burn the bodies. "I was afraid of the dead guys. I saw them, arms limp, faces sometimes twisted in anguish, mostly calm, and I was afraid of them. They were me. We wore the same uniform, were the same height, had the same face. They were me, and they were dead." In the end, when Richie is wounded, he returns home. This is a compelling, graphic, necessarily gruesome, and wholly plausible novel. It neither condemns nor glorifies the war but certainly causes readers to think about the events. Other difficult issues, such as race and the condition of the Vietnamese people, are sensitively and realistically incorporated into the novel. The soldiers' language is raw, but appropriate to the characters. This is a book which should be read by both young adults and adults. Maria B. Salvadore, District of Columbia Public Library

Publishers Weekly Review: Like A Rumor of War, Brothers, and the film Platoon, this tells the story of Vietnam from the foot soldier's point of view. Myers accomplishes his heartbreaking intent by pacing the book to mirror the grunt's life. The plot is simply a soldier's life from the day he arrives "in country" to the day he is flown back to "the World." Vietnam is, for one bright black teenager named Richard Perry, days of numbing tedium, racial tension, Army SNAFUs, and rumors of peace punctuated by moments of near hallucinatory terror, violence, agony and loss. What matters? Surviving 365 days; and love for his comradesloudmouthed and funny Peewee Gates, Johnson the brawny, deadly machine gunner, white buddies Monaco and Lobel, and Lieutenant Carroll (who, like many real-life officers in Vietnam, cares more about his men than promotions). Other authors have gotten the details right, but Myers (Crystal, Motown & Didi) reaches into the minds of the soldiers and readers are startled to remember that these were teenagers, thrown into hideous battle against other teenagers (and their families), surrounded by an enemy that was all-pervasive and invisible. Readers, including those born after the fall of Saigon, will hear the morbid music of those wordsChu Lai, Khe Sanh, Phuoc Ha, medevac, hot LZ, Tetand in Perry and his buddies (especially Peewee, one of this year's great creations) they will reel from the human consequences of battle. A worthy memorial for brother Thomas Wayne "Sonny" Myers, KIA May 7, 1968, the Nam. Ages 13-up. (May)

Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ The powerful story of an introspective Harlem youth who is sent to fight in Vietnam. With dreams of college fading, Ritchie Perry (17) enlists, buying time to consider his future. By mistake, he's ordered to Southeast Asia and into a bloody, violent nightmare where he sees his fellows gunned down (sometimes by their own side), women and children mutilated and killed, desperate heroism and equally desperate cowardice; his articulate, dispassionate telling only accentuates his story's horror, Myers masterfully re-creates the combat zone with its "hours of boredom, seconds of terror," its crushing tension and the distortion of values brought on by the relentless proximity of death--Ritchie says, "We were in the middle of it, and it was deeply within us." He survives racist officers, pitched battles, guerrilla raids, and multiple wounds--not all of them physical; whether his numbed spirit will eventually thaw is a question the author leaves open. War-story fans will find enough action here, though it isn't glorified; thoughtful readers will be haunted by this tribute to a ravaged generation.
(Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 1988)