In this searing novel, Walter Dean Myers connects Marcus Perry, an African American who drives supplies to the front during World War II, to the next generations of Perrys who narrate his earlier books Fallen Angels (set during the Vietnam War) and Sunrise over Fallujah.
Nineteen-year-old Josiah ("Woody") Wedgewood of the 29th Infantry, who narrates, and Marcus Perry run into each other in England at the start of the novel. Back in their hometown of Bedford, Va., Woody played football for Moneta, a white high school, and Marcus played for a "Colored" school, so they'd never competed against each other, but they'd worked together at Johnson's Hardware. As with his previous novels, Myers pulls no punches. Before readers are 50 pages in, readers witness the bloodshed as Josiah and his company storm Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944--an arm (its "bloody socket still bleeding") brushes against Woody's legs, and a soldier climbs out of a burning amphibious vehicle only to be shot by Germans. The young men who survive come together into new companies, and Myers conveys the attitudes of the day through candid conversations among men like Gomez, whose family emigrated to the U.S. from Mexico in 1924, and humanizes the enemy through details such as a mass card for a German soldier's brother, discovered as they searched his corpse.
Teens will discover too many sadly similar themes running through these three well-crafted novels; the books' impact builds with each one readers complete. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness