Book Reviews

Title: Tunesmith Chronicles: A Musical History Tour
Author: Lem Genovese
Genre: Memoir/Autobiography/Creative Nonfiction
Reviewer: Joyce Faulkner

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): B009EUCI7A

The lessons and legacy from our war in Indochina are the stuff of contradiction. There are plenty of negatives should one decide to walk down that misbegotten road. It has been paved with bitterness, resentment, distrust, propaganda and scapegoating which have made it smoother and far easier to tread upon with each passing decade. The far more difficult journey is not found on a marked highway and is much harder to locate. An honest, fact based journal is not just needed should this path be chosen, it should be demanded by our posterity. Veterans from all combat zones need to better understand that responsibility to aid in the process of sharing wisdom, encouraging understanding and healing.

Title: Proof of Our Resolve
Author: Chris Hernandez
Genre: Fiction/Thriller
Reviewer: Joyce Faulkner

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): B0099XMR1E

"Proof of Our Resolve" is a novel about a Texas Army National Guard infantry platoon deployed to Afghanistan. This books attempts to convey some of the experiences of soldiers serving in Afghanistan through a fictional platform. The characters are representative of and much like the Soldiers and Marines one would find in a combat unit. The story's environment and tactical operations are as close to real as possible.

Title: Onishiwan, 1945
Author: David Andrew Westwood
Genre: Historical Fiction
Reviewer: Terry Shoptaugh

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): B008ZFFYVW

Too old for the draft, Gil Rossiter spends his days in a basement of a Seattle newspaper typesetting articles about the war. His wife, a Japanese American, is incarcerated with her family in a Wyoming internment camp, her ethnicity the reason for his lack of advancement to reporter.

Meanwhile, Ray Ingersoll has been sent back Stateside for sentencing, after shooting Japanese prisoners on Iwo Jima. Because he has an otherwise exemplary record, the authorities decide to assign him guard duty at the same internment camp. But Ray has been damaged more than just physically by the fighting, and he brings his hatred of the enemy to his new job.

When one of the paper’s combat correspondents is killed, Gil is offered the chance to finally write for the paper, but on what will become the arena for the last battle of WWII, the Japanese-held island of Okinawa.

Gil flies out, and follows a unit of Marines around the island until they are stopped at the hideous battle for the south. He watches as one after another of his new colleagues is killed. But there is a larger destiny in store for Gil, one that affects his wife back home..

Title: Dog Soldier Moon
Author: McKendree R. Long lll
Genre: Historical Fiction
Reviewer: Bonnie Toews

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1930584407

In this sequel to his novel, No Good Like It Is, McKendree Long continues the saga of Dobey Walls and Jimmy Boss Melton during the three years following the Civil War. In Dog Soldier Moon, a great crime decimates the tiny Panhandle community of Canadian Fort, twisting relationships and putting Dobey and the Boss on a trail of retribution and frontier justice, yet unaware that they are targets of two Pinkerton teams. Black Kettle, Meotzi, the 'Boy General' Custer, and J.B. Hickok flesh out the cast in this all new classic tale.

Title: My True Course: Dutch Van Kirk Northumberland to Hiroshima
Author: Suzanne Simon Dietz
Genre: Biography
Reviewer: Charlene Rubush

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0692016767

He looked like the boy next door, a Depression-era kid. The now ninety-year-old gentleman with a remarkable memory and a sharp wit became in 2011 the only living crewman from the Silverplate Boeing B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945.

A debate continued for more than half a century with his former commanding officer, Paul Tibbets, until his death about how Dutch Van Kirk came to navigate the Enola Gay from Tinian to Hiroshima. The answer is part of Dutch's biographical chronicle.

The navigator of the Enola Gay's biography is an authentic "greatest generation" story told through his unedited letters to and from home, Van Kirk's vignettes from his Army Air Corps training through Europe, Africa, and the Pacific to the first atomic strike in history.