Historical

Title: For Love of Country
Author: William Hammond
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Reviewer: Stephen Phillips

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 159114373X

The novel opens with the capture of the Cutler merchant brig Eagle by Barbary pirates. Young Caleb Cutler and his shipmates are taken as prisoners to Algiers. Richard Cutler is sent to North Africa to pay the ransom demanded by the Dey of Algiers to free his brother and the others. After the dey rejects the ransom, Richard must defend his family's fortune from Algerian pirates who try to take it by force. Victorious in a fierce battle at sea, Richard travels to Paris to report to John Paul Jones, his former naval commander, who will serve as America's emissary to the Barbary States. In Paris, amid the tumult of the French Revolution, Richard engages in a desperate attempt to save his former lover, the beautiful Anne-Marie Helvetian, and her two young daughters from the guillotine.

Title: Shall Never See So Much
Author: Gerald Gillis
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fictioin
Reviewer: Gail Chatfield

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1609101316

Shall Never See So Much is the story of a brother and sister in the epochal year 1968. The story is told from the point of view of Chicago-natives Tom and Kate Flanagan. Calm, thoughtful Tom Flanagan is a young U.S. Marine lieutenant serving as a platoon leader in Vietnam at the time of the momentous Tet Offensive. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, high-spirited, activist Kate Flanagan accepts a job on the staff of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy as RFK begins his ill-fated quest for the presidency. The previously close relationship between the brother and sister is severely strained over their respective positions on the war, and their discord only serves to heighten the anxieties felt by the entire Flanagan family. Tom’s own survival is threatened by the heavy fighting he experiences, especially during the Battle of Hue. Shall Never See So Much is a story of heroism and triumph.

Title: Victory Road
Author: Mark Bowlin
Genre: Fiction, Historical Event
Reviewer: Lee Boyland

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1933651903

Victory Road is the second book in the award-winning Texas Gun Club series. It's the fall of 1943: The Allied Advance up the Italian Peninsula has ground to a halt, and the prospect of taking Rome before Christmas seems more distant than ever. In their first action since Salerno, First Lieutenant Sam Taft and the soldiers of Able Company are sent to wrest a lonely stretch of road from the German defenders--the Italians call it Highway 6, but the boys of the Texas Gun Club know it as Victory Road. As Sam slugs it out in the valley, somewhere beyond the highway high up in the mountains, his cousin, Captain Perkin Berger struggles against harsh elements and murderous German intelligence agents in his quest to be the first American into San Pietro.

Title: French Letters: Engaged in War
Author: Jack Woodville London
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Literary
Reviewer: Dave Brown

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0982120710

French Letters: Engaged in War is the second book in the French Letters Trilogy. The companion to French Letters: Virginia's War, it is the story of Will Hastings, an army doctor caught up in the D-Day landings in Normandy and the drive to capture St. Lo, France. Isolated from Virginia Sullivan and the events taking place at home, Will faces the demands of combat surgery under fire and the losses of his brother, his friends, and his connection to home. Historically accurate and precise and covering events from exactly the same time frame as the events in the first volume, Engaged in War is a novel of the will to survive when war, distance, loss, and the uncertainty of the future separate a couple far beyond the breaking point.