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Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Nov 2005, 371 pages
Paperback:
Oct 2006, 512 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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Turow has penned a searing story of World War II. An extraordinary, unforgettable novel, which was inspired by his own father's military experiences.
Stewart Dubinsky knew his father had served in World War II. And he'd
been told how David Dubin (as his father had Americanized the name
that Stewart later reclaimed) had rescued Stewart's mother from the
horrors of the Balingen concentration camp. But when, after his
father's death, he discovers a packet of wartime letters to a former
fiancée and learns of his father's court-martial and imprisonment, he
is plunged into the mystery of his family's secret history and is
driven to uncover the truth about this enigmatic, distant man who
always refused to talk about his war.
As he pieces together his
father's past through military archives, letters, and, finally, notes
from a memoir his father wrote in prison, secretly preserved by the
officer who defended him, Stewart starts to assemble a dramatic and
baffling chain of events. He learns how Dubin, a JAG lawyer attached
to Patron's Third Army and eager for combat experience, got more than
he bargained for when he was ordered to arrest Robert Martin, a
wayward OSS officer who, despite his spectacular bravery with the
French Resistance, appeared to be acting on orders other than his
commander's.
In pursuit of Martin, Dubin and his sergeant had
parachuted into Bastogne just as the Battle of the Bulge reached its
apex. Pressed into the leadership of a desperately depleted rifle
company, the men were forced to abandon their quest for Martin and his
fiery, maddeningly elusive comrade, Gita Lodz, as they fought for
their lives through the ferocious winter battle that would determine
Europe's fate.
Reconstructing the terrible events and agonizing
choices his father faced on the battlefield, in the courtroom, and in
love, Stewart gains a closer understanding of his past, of his
father's character, and of the brutal nature of war itself.
1.
STEWART: ALL PARENTS KEEP SECRETS
All parents keep secrets from their children. My father, it seemed, kept
more than most.
The first clue came when Dad passed away in February 2003 at the age of
eighty-eight, after sailing into a Bermuda Triangle of illness—heart disease,
lung cancer, and emphysema—all more or less attributable to sixty years of
cigarettes. Characteristically, my mother refused to leave the burial details to
my sister and me and met the funeral director with us. She chose a casket big
enough to require a hood ornament, then pondered each word as the mortician read
out the proposed death announcement.
"Was David a veteran?" he asked. The undertaker was the cleanest-looking man I'd
ever seen, with lacquered nails, shaped eyebrows, and a face so smooth I
suspected electrolysis.
"World War II," barked Sarah, who at the age of fifty-two still raced to answer
before me.
The funeral director showed us...
Moving away from books, both fiction and non-fiction, centering on the courtroom, but keeping a character we've met in previous books (Kindle County journalist Stewart Dubin) Scott Turow tries his hand at a World War II story, inspired by his father's own military experience...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
About The
Author: Despite publishing
about ten books, including his
six legal thrillers (Reversible
Errors, Personal Injuries
etc), Turow continues to work as
an attorney majoring on white
collar criminal litigation and
pro bono work, including
cases involving the death
penalty.
He was born in 1949 in
Chicago, Illinois. He graduated
with high honors from Amherst
College in 1970 and then
attended the Stanford University
Creative Writing Center from
1970-72. He stayed at Stanford...
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