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A Book Review © 2004
by Barry D. Gilfry
Wild Child Publishing.com © 2004
"I write all my books for the primary purpose of entertaining my readers, but I also want them to learn something, too."--Homer Hickam
Stephen Coonts, author of eight New York Times bestselling novels, says, "Homer Hickam is the best natural storyteller I've read in years." I will gladly second that emotion. The Keeper's Son made me laugh, at several points actually brought tears to my eyes, and never failed to amuse me. This new page-turner from Homer Hickam is first-class entertainment all the way. It also left me with quite a few things to ponder.
In 1941 and '42, when Europe was already at war, our merchant ships, indeed, the world's merchant ships, paraded up and down the Atlantic sea lanes oblivious to the danger that lurked beneath the waves. These ships ran not in convoys but one by one, lights ablaze--the entire eastern seaboard alight, for that matter--as if there were no war on, just so many fish going to school while sharks watched from dark waters.
This is the authentic backdrop that Homer Hickam chose for The Keeper's Son, and this is the story that Homer Hickam tells.
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A few miles off the North Carolina coast in Pamlico Sound, somewhere southwest of Hatteras and northeast of Morehead City, lies the island of Killakeet. If you were to take the three-hour journey by ferry from Morehead City, touch at the landing on Killakeet Island then continue to Hatteras, your impression of the tiny island would be "...a line of plank shacks and nets drying on wooden racks and a few workboats bobbing at rude piers..." for "Killakeet was sand and more sand piled onto sand, alleviated only by the sea and Pamlico Sound," nothing more than a shoal, really, a shifting mound of sand that a few hearty people, mostly wreckers and fishermen, called home.
Were you to disembark the ferry, a long walk would await you, as the civilization, if that is what you could call it, was on the far side of the island. Well, if you really want to visit, why not just follow that young lady over there?
"Dosie Crossan returned to Killakeet Island to the creak of saddle leather and the jingle of tack, leading a big brown mare down the ramp of the Wednesday ferry from Morehead City. When she had left the island a dozen years before, she had been a rich man's daughter, bright and cheerful and filled with boundless dreams. By November of 1941, Dosie had lived through the Great Depression, discovered what it meant to be hungry, put herself through college by selling encyclopedias door-to-door, and been fired as an assistant editor of a New York publishing house for taking a lunch break that lasted for three days..."
The Crossan House, built on a southerly-facing beach and lying somewhat south and east of the population center of the island, could be counted as one of perhaps only five landmarks on the island, if you were to discount natural elements of geography such as Loon Pond, Wild Pony Marsh, Thurlow's Lump and Teach Woods. Besides it and the ferry landing, there were Whalebone City, Doakes Coast Guard Station, and Killakeet Lighthouse.
Jack Thurlow was the man who kept the light of Killakeet Lighthouse. However, his was not the only lighthouse in the outer banks... "To the north sat the lighthouses of Ocracoke, Hatteras, Bodie Island, and Currituck Beach. To the south was the lighthouse of Cape Lookout. Up and down the sandy islands off North Carolina, the Lighthouse Service had set up these great towers with their flashing spokes of light to warn the freighters, tankers, warships, fishing boats, banana boats, and every other kind of vessel that they were passing through what had been called for centuries the Graveyard of the Atlantic."
At one time, Keeper Jack had a family on Killakeet, a family that consisted of his young wife Trudelle and his son Josh. In giving birth to her second son, Jacob, Trudelle died. Keeper Jack's family then consisted of his sons, but two years later Josh lost his younger brother Jacob at sea in an attempt to recover a small boat.
Josh had a difficult time living with the memory of losing his little brother, and after years of searching for him and waiting for the sea to return him (the current always brought everything back Killakeet), he abandoned the island and his father, joined the Coast Guard, and headed for Alaska. It was a letter from Killakeet's doctor claiming that Keeper Jack was dying that brought Josh back home.
Upon Dosie Crossan's return to the island, it became every woman's perceived duty to get Dosie and Josh married. However, remember that we were approaching December of 1941. Pearl Harbor was about to receive some rough treatment at the hands of the Japanese, and the United States about to be drawn into the conflict it had been avoiding, about to be snatched from the womb of isolationism and forced to face the realities of a world at war.
It was about that time that the U-boats, already in American waters, began making their presence known: In fact, in 1942, German submarines would attack and sink more tonnage than the Japanese would do in the Pacific throughout the entirety of World War II.
When I interviewed Homer Hickam regarding The Keeper's Son, I observed, "You humanize the Germans," and his reply was, "They were human." I think it is the same in all wars, that soldiers and sailors from both sides have families, loved ones, perhaps children at home, a belief in God, and a desire to return home and put fighting and killing behind them. However, not all authors care to show us both sides.
Mr. Hickam introduces to us Captain Otto Krebs, formerly Otto von Krebs, if we are to believe Krebs' own tale. Actually, he was an orphan, who had added the 'von' to his name hoping to acquire respectability.
Through Capt. Krebs and his crew, we are treated to a vivid look at life aboard a German U-boat, and it is not a pretty sight. In this claustrophobic, dreary and dank atmosphere, the young recruits slept in bunk beds soaked in their own sweat, were often seasick, and passed their days slogging through ankle-deep bilgewater while surrounded by live explosives and leaky tanks containing over one hundred tons of diesel fuel.
Capt. Krebs' boat, the U-560, was crewed by approximately 32 men stuffed into its coffin-like proportions of eight feet across and 180 feet long. The U-560 was a fairly new U-boat, a type VII-C, most likely built in Hamburg in 1940 by Shipbuilders Blohm & Voss. These boats took a beating and sailed home often for repairs.
By 1940, the Germans had been building and perfecting their 'unterseeboot' flotilla for over a quarter of a century, planning always for the possibility of unrestricted submarine warfare. It was thus prepared that these Germans crossed the Atlantic Hell-bent on blowing up every ship they encountered--cargo, passenger, even a few of their own if necessary--and landing on American soil.
They made a big mistake in trying to land on Killakeet Island first. The islanders proved to be tough adversaries, first in the line of defense against a German invasion.
Now that you have a pretty good idea what to expect from this fantastic sea saga and what our soon-to-be-unsung-heroes were up against, I'd like to take a moment to introduce to you some of Mr. Hickam's characters.
First there were the Maudie Janes, the barefoot crew members of the Maudie Jane, an 83-foot Coast Guard Cutter. Josh Thurlow and Bosun Phimble had served together in Alaska, but here on Killakeet, their crew consisted of boys from the island who knew about boats, fishing, wrecking and very little else. Along with their mongrel mascot, Marvin, they sailed the seas off Pamlico Sound. Their boat had a depth charge rack, but no depth charges, a machine gun, but no ammo. They had been trained to rescue ships at sea, not fight a war.
One of the inhabitants of the island was Purdy, an old pelican. He was very happy to pass his days taking naps on the 'pizer'; oh, that's a porch, and you'll find that Killakeeters share a lexicon all their own.
Killakeet had a preacher, who was just called The Preacher. He had lost his faith in God, but ended up doing some pretty mean shooting from the business end of the machine gun when Josh finally found some ammo.
There was the doctor, who wasn't... Well, let me just say that if you were to check with the schools he claimed to have attended, you wouldn't find any record of him. As for the medical records and fingerprints he claimed to have kept of the residents of Killakeet? Just as nebulous.
Willow was a beautiful young woman whom many Killakeeters call a "hoodoo" since she spoke little; what she did say, most considered to be gibberish. In actual fact, she and Jacob had been playmates as children. After Jacob was lost, Willow just had no reason to speak.
Harro arrived on the German submarine U-560, under the command of Capt. Krebs. He was also an orphan who had been raised in the same orphanage as Otto Krebs. When Willow first saw Harro, she said that he was Jacob returned. Did the sea, in a roundabout way, really bring Jacob back to the island where he was born? Keeper Jack thought that Harro's face had the same features as Trudelle's.
These are the people and elements that make up Homer Hickam's wonderful 'sea story.'
There is one little nugget of minutia that really tickled me, and you can take it for what you think it is worth. Rex Stewart is a character who is introduced about midway through the book. He's a Hollywood, horse-riding stuntman who has had nearly every bone in his body broken, an old timer who has seen better days.
He has taken his physical at the Los Angeles Armed Services Recruiting Center and has been turned down. As he is about to leave with his envelope marked 4-F, he's confronted by another recruiter, who tells him that the Coast Guard is trying to set up a mounted patrol along our nation's coasts. Rex is told he might be allowed to join if he can provide his own uniform, his own weapon, and...oh, yes, a horse.
Mr. Hickam gives us a brief description of Hollywood: "A lot of folks tended to look out the window in Hollywood, recalling what they'd once been, and they talked a lot on the telephone, too, mostly about nothing. Hollywood was filled up with people who'd once been one thing or another and now talked on the telephone about nothing."
I may be putting too much into this, but I read this part of the book with a smile on my face, knowing the troubles that Mr. Hickam went through dealing with 'Hollywood' in the making of Rocket Boys into a movie--a movie that became 'October Sky', an anagram for Rocket Boys, a movie where five or six characters were molded into four, and where West Virginia University's name was changed to University of West Virginia because... well, basically because the people making the movie couldn't get it right or maybe they just weren't that concerned about details.
Rex says of his horse: "His name's Joe Johnston, named after the Civil War general. He's a trick pony." There was, indeed, a southern general named Joe Johnston.
By coincidence, the director of the film October Sky was also named Joe Johnston.
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