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by Barry Dale Gilfry © 2005
Wild Child Publishing.com © 2005
Including a bonus, Wild Child Exclusive (not currently available) conversation with Homer Hickam.
Although Homer will always have a special place in his heart for Rocket Boys (which has become a beloved classic around the world) and the other books in the Coalwood series, his passion is to continue to write provocative and interesting books. -From www.homerhickam.com
The Ambassador's Son receives Wild Child's Highest Rating: A+
***
"The morning sun was a grinning, red-toothed warrior, come to slay the night. Bloody and quick, it tore through the night-riding clouds sitting on the purplish, rolling sea and flung a silver white spear across Melagi, abruptly turning the great volcano that dominated the island from gray shadow to the color of bright jade."
Thus begins The Ambassador's Son, and all I can say is, "Wow!" I have read some whoppers in my day, but this new story from Homer Hickam tops the lot. The troika previously heading my list included Sins of the Seventh Sister (review) by Huston Curtiss, Boy's Life by Robert McCammon, and The Keeper's Son (review), also by Homer Hickam. I have moved that trio to second, third and fourth spots respectively... and very respectfully, I might add.
I believe it was Mark Twain who once said, "You can't go wrong if you write a story about President Lincoln and a boy with a dog."
I find this most interesting: In our April issue, Wild Child interviewed Stacey Deutsch and Rhody Cohon, and reviewed their book Lincoln's Legacy. Their book tells the tale of children who go back in time to convince a vacillating President Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. I don't know if there's a dog in the book, but these two authors are setting the world of children's books on fire with their educational, highly readable literature.
In his latest novel, The Ambassador's Son, master storyteller Homer Hickam places his ragtag crew of North Carolina hometown boys (home-island boys?) and their mascot, Marvin the mutt, aboard whatever they can piece together from scrap -- or whatever they can steal; graduating from their Coast Guard cutter in The Keeper's Son to a Catalina amphibious aircraft, to a PT-boat, later modified by the salty crew into a speedy and deadly gunboat. Add not one president, but two -- well, presidents to be... a scrawny and inexperienced John Fitzgerald Kennedy and a shrewd and resourceful Richard 'Nick' Nixon -- and you have one big hit.
Apparently, good writing advice never goes out of style.
Another thing that never goes out of style is... well, style, and Homer Hickam displays plenty of it here. He fabricates the tale of The Ambassador's Son page by page from a meticulously-spun thread of lucid sentences, bounteous paragraphs and adroitly-organized chapters, juggling no fewer than twenty-five characters with aplomb, yet never leaving the reader to wonder "who's that?" or "what just happened?" That is a major accomplishment, since the plot of The Ambassador's Son has more twists than a Chilean mountain highway.
Moreover, while I'm burying myself in similes, let me confess that my memory is just a tad shorter than a pirate's wooden leg, so I am usually off-balance when I read a book with this many characters. Nevertheless, I was able to name fifteen in my head just now without looking them up. You hear the word 'cinematic' bandied about a great deal these days, but Homer's writing can best be described as 'visual delight'.
It is a good thing, too, that this book is so vivid, because in the midst of writing this review, I was forced to place my new car in the shop for a week (I stash my writing notes in the trunk), I experienced a devastating crash of my nine-month-old Dell laptop, and simultaneously lost my copy of the book (still in the trunk of that rental car, perhaps?).
I am very saddened to have lost that book, as it was sent to me specifically for review by St. Martin's Press in New York (courtesy of the Hickams), but the story lives on in my head. So let's get on with the show.
The Ambassador's Son has its start in The Keeper's Son, wherein the author introduces Josh Thurlow, Ensign Eureka Phimble, Ready, Stobs, Millie, and the rest of the North Carolina crew. Now, while book two is nicely self-contained so that a reading of the first is not requisite, I am certain that most who read TAS first will want to read TKS for the sheer joy of it, and will not suffer in the least for having read the two out of order.
Who is the ambassador's son? That would be John F. Kennedy (Joe Kennedy Sr. was the giddy US Ambassador to England), though there is another ambassador's son in the book, Lieutenant David Armistead, fictional cousin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I emphasized the word fictional, because one reviewer maintained that Lt. Armistead was real. (See conversation with author following review.)
Josh Thurlow and the entire Killakeet Island crew are on special assignment in the Pacific theater, directly under the command of Admiral Halsey. When Lt. Armistead goes AWOL, or worse, is suspected of going over to the enemy, Halsey saddles Josh and the boys with the duty of tracking him down. In their subsequent travels, Thurlow, Phimble and Ready meet an unusual assortment of fellow warriors and local denizens.
Jack 'Shafty' Kennedy is an unhappy, anemic, and inexperienced former patrol torpedo boat skipper -- I say 'former', as his vessel (the now famous PT-109), has been cut in half by a Japanese destroyer. Headquarters cannot imagine that a destroyer could cut a PT-boat in half unless the crew was asleep at the wheel, and so it is their intent to court-martial the young naval officer. Kennedy, suffering the effects of malaria, dysentery, coral cuts and bruises from the mishap, along with chronic back pain, only wants to find the local hospital and secure some much-needed medical attention.
Richard 'Nick' Nixon runs a business empire reminiscent of Milo Minderbinder and his M&M Enterprises in Joseph Heller's Catch-22, only we discover early that Nixon's intentions are nothing but the best. Oh, sure, poker games, massage parlors and souvenir shops abound, along with laundries, coffee houses, bars, hamburger stands (serving indefinable meat and cheese products -- somewhat like McDonald's), and the like. But the profits go to provide R&R for the troops, and that's a good thing.
What happens when Nixon and Kennedy, along with James A. Michener, square off in a poker game for high stakes and a new boat? You'll have to read the novel to find out.
Felicity Markham is an English expatriate, a colonist who came to Noa-Noa with her husband to build a copra plantation. Now her husband is dead, the war has crippled shipping, and she and her son, John-Bull, make every attempt to return to their adopted island home. Felicity is tough as the Solomon Sea coral, and imbued with the dogma of the Christian colonists, viewing the locals as savages whom God will punish... Well, you know the story of Christianity and colonial rule -- the white man's justification for third-world dominance.
Joe Gimmee, a native leader of great influence, is an observer; he manages to move among the Japanese Imperial Army and the allied forces without suffering the wrath or raising the suspicions of either. In the end, he delivers to his people the mana promised, and receives the answer to his prayers.
Penelope, to my mind the most fascinating character of all, is a machete-wielding banshee, dark and dazzling as the night sky, who falls for our protagonist. She leads Josh on his journey through a New Georgia maze, guiding him deftly in thick jungles and along unseen paths, while he sometimes does not trust her as he should. She calls him Josh Darling and he calls her Penelope Dear. Together they cut a wide swath, she with her two-foot long blade and he with his razor-sharp Aleut ax... And while Josh views Penelope's penchant for separating men from their heads with a critical eye, he is none too reticent to use his own blade to good effect when the mood strikes.
Whereas in the first book Josh's crew was limited to travel by sea in a Coast Guard cutter, they now have the luxury of a Catalina, an amphibious aircraft, with the questionable capabilities of Ensign Phimble at the helm. At first, it is not clear where Phimble obtained his flying lessons, and we later surmise that he probably never had any. Still, his tenacity manages to get this heavier-than-air craft airborne and back down again with varying degrees of finesse.
Author Hickam paints his picture of the people and events in his tale with a detachment worthy of the gods themselves, allowing the story to unfold naturally without editorial interference or moralizing about the extant cannibalism (native custom), savagery (on all sides), oppressive and hypocritical missionaries, Imperialist Japanese, Imperialist Christians, Imperialist colonists and the formerly isolationist and now overly-zealous Americans; all who come to conquer, steal, subjugate, liberate, destroy, and generally wage war on these South Pacific islands known as the Solomons, with little regard for the land itself or the native peoples who inhabit it. After all, this is wartime, and that justifies all. Doesn't it?
So adept is Mr. Hickam at his craft of dream-weaving that the average reader will not even be aware, by reading TAS, that he or she is receiving a better history lesson than any taught by most high schools in four years.
Also, at no time does this book take itself too seriously, and in the lightness there are high points of humor, such as the time a USO troupe assaults (and insults) the Imperial Japanese Army with jokes; or our own Ready O'Neal from Josh's crew suggests to a young James Michener, "You should write a book about this place." Or my favorite: Author Hickam has one characters call the American base in Hawaii 'Hickman Field', when it is really Hickam Field; yet even Microsoft Word (2003) is programmed to try to change the name 'Hickam' to 'Hickman'.
I cannot praise this tome highly enough for its ability to take the reader on a journey beyond expectation, reveal the intricacies of a world that actually existed, and speculate, with reason and research, what might have been.
This is first-class, highly creative and compelling entertainment from Homer H. Hickam. Buy it, read it, enjoy it. Share it with your friends.
Follow this link to read the Wild Child Exclusive (not currently available) conversation with Homer Hickam. |
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