Fiction

Title: Sisters of Valor
Author: Rosalie T. Turner
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Reviewer: Claudia Pemberton

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0979237521

The '60's were a turbulent time in our country, and it was especially difficult for the service wife as protests against the war were so personal against the serviceman. In SISTERS OF VALOR four very different service wives come together to find the support they need. The story continues until today when the wives look at what the Vietnam Era meant to us as a country, as families, and as individuals.

Title: For the Fatherland
Author: Walter Zapotoczny, Jr
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Reviewer: David Tschanz

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1439235929

Growing up in Germany in the 1930s, Kurt Schultheiss was like the other kids in his neighborhood: rambunctious, inquisitive, and the center of his parents' world. With his blond hair and blue eyes, he was also the picture of Aryan purity, a poster child for the band of "magnificent youngsters" with which Adolf Hitler plotted to build his "new world." As Hitler's power grew, he created the Hitler Youth, a breeding ground for the Nazi SS. As members of the Hitler Youth, Kurt and his friends enjoyed camping, weapons training--and complete indoctrination into the Nazi philosophy of world domination. Eventually Kurt became part of the infamous Einsatzgruppen, a group notorious for atrocities committed against Jews and Russians at the German Eastern Front. In this captivating novel, an elderly Kurt looks back on his life and struggles to find atonement for the terrible sins of his youth, offering in the process his explanation for how youthful potential can go so terribly wrong.

Title: Grey Wolf: A Novel in History
Author: David Huffman
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Reviewer: Buddy Cox

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1449909078

World War Two is about to begin and a German Naval Officer is going to war. Again. Oskar Keppler, a U-boat veteran of the Great War, takes command of the Type VII submarine U-115. Based on the actual War Diary of a German U-boat at the outset of World War II, this novel presents the U-boat experience from the perspective of those who lived it. Vivid descriptions of life in a diesel-electric powered submarine: day after day of mundane drilling, horrendous smells and ever deteriorating food are punctuated by moments of action, elation, terror and dread. In perhaps the most important single patrol of the first half of the Battle of the Atlantic, a handful of men will change the balance of power, and strategic capabilities of their adversary, for years to come.

Title: Jackie O: On the Couch
Author: Alma Bond
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Reviewer: Joyce Gilmour

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): ISBN / EAN

Jackie O: On the Couch is the story of Jackie Kennedy Onassis as she might have written it.

This is not just another biography. For the first time, Jackie O: On the Couch highlights Jackie's life from her own perspective, as imagined by author Dr. Alma Bond, a psychoanalyst and long-time student of Jackie lore.

The facts are all historically correct, as are the ideas, the Washington intrigue and politics, and the examination of the role of women in society and in the White House. Jackie speaks of her need to record her story truthfully--to replace the hodgepodge of lies published during her lifetime. Speaking as an older woman, she ponders how her points of view have changed from those she held when she was young.

The book delves into her childhood and explores how and why Jackie became the person she was. It also explores the Kennedys, and how John F. Kennedy's background affected his marriage. Jackie's deep love for Jack, his early inattentiveness, their difficulties together, his outrageous womanizing, happy times at the White House, and the tragedy of his assassination-all are viewed through Jackie's eyes.

Jackie writes of her need for Aristotle Onassis, debunking the notion that she married him purely for his money, and traces the joyful early years of the marriage through to its dramatic collapse and Ari's difficult death.

A different Jackie emerges into the world of publishing. Her new persona allows her to establish her very best relationship with the stout and adoring Maurice Tempelsman, until non-Hodgkins lymphoma takes her life in 1994, at age 64.

Jackie O: On the Couch is a unique exploration of the life and loves of a great historical figure. Jackie Kennedy Onassis deeply prized her privacy and, as a result, she was both revered and mysterious

Title: French Letters, Book One Virginia's War: Tierra, Texas 1944
Author: Jack Woodville London
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Reviewer: Claudia Pemberton

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0981597505

French Letters: Virginia's War is a poignant novel that earned uncommon critical acclaim, being named a finalist for "Best Novel of the South," an award given by the Anderson Foundation in honor of Willie Morris and a finalist for the Military Writers Society of America award for Best Historical Novel of the Year.
This first book of the French Letters trilogy is the tale of one woman's home front experience, set against the back drop of the story of a small town that has plenty going on behind the scenes. It was there one morning that an unexpectedly pregnant Virginia Sullivan read in her father's newspaper that she had supposedly eloped with a soldier. This is news to Virginia, not to mention her "husband" Will Hastings, who was already off at war and knows nothing of it.
Sullivan is the daughter of a small town's leading figure, a newspaper owner who, because of his knowledge of everyone's personal business, runs the local black market in ration coupons and hard-to-get tires and gasoline, and sister of Bart, a draft dodger who runs the post office while keeping her mail from going or coming and preventing Will Hastings, the lead figure in French Letters: Engaged in War, from knowing that Virginia is pregnant or that her father has published a phony story.
There may be a World War going on thousands of miles away, but there's plenty going on behind the scenes in Tierra, TX to keep Virginia preoccupied.