Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Vietnam Era

  • The SOMEWHERE I SEE YOU AGAIN by Nancy Thorne – Coming of Age YA, Vietnam War Era, Friendship/Adventure

    The SOMEWHERE I SEE YOU AGAIN by Nancy Thorne – Coming of Age YA, Vietnam War Era, Friendship/Adventure

    Nancy Thorne weaves a brilliant story that encompasses all of the outrageous and contradictory emotions of two young women in her YA novel, The Somewhere I See You Again.

    Set in eastern Canada, Thorne takes us back to the early 1970s when the Vietnam War was headlining the news. Hannah has her own war, though, and she has given it a name, Luke. It stands for leukemia, which has changed her life and colors her world as her mom battles cancer. 

    Hannah lives on Sloan Hill, the wrong side of town, where her family struggles to survive. Her mother’s battle with Luke leaves her weak and bedridden. Hannah must find a job to help out and pick up some of the lost income. To make matters worse, Hannah’s high school is being torn down, which means she and her best friend Stacy will attend Carver High and hobnob with the Burgess aristocracy. Hannah rides on Stacy’s social coattails as her friend’s quiet beauty opens doors and gains them entrance into the homes of the wealthy. 

    One of the many goals on Hannah’s list is to get inside her dream house, a mansion where her father works as the groundskeeper. Hannah learns that Christopher Holding lives in her dream house and thus begins her mission to set Stacy up with Chris and get invited to his big party. Once inside, she takes photos to share with her father but unwittingly captures images of Chris dealing drugs. Oops. 

    Stacy has her own set of problems.

    It’s only been a year since her father’s death, but her mother decides to become involved with a real creep – Mr. Callaghan, whose interests seem to expand beyond the attentions of Stacy’s mother and onto Stacy. When Mr. Callaghan becomes her mom’s fiancé, Hannah and Stacy know she’s marrying him for the security he brings, not for love. Stacy goes along with Hannah’s plan and becomes Chris’s girlfriend, even though she’s in love with Danny, a short-order cook who dreams of being a chef. She keeps Danny a secret because she knows Hannah would never approve.

    When Stacy needs money to help her mom, Hannah devises a plan to blackmail Chris for his drug money with the photos she took at his party. Because his dad is on the fast track to being a judge, pictures of his son dealing drugs would destroy his chances. The photos, it turns out, become leverage. The day the two girls decide to approach Chris, he is already gone. His father accepted a job across the continent in Vancouver, BC. 

    Nancy Thorne delivers her characters in high-resolution.

    Thorne develops a real schemer in Hannah, who goes into overdrive. Mr. Callaghan finds them both jobs in a swank hotel in Jasper and even gives them train fare. Instead, they hitchhike across Canada straight to Vancouver. Along the way, they meet a young American trying to avoid the draft. Things go from crazy to insane as Hannah and Stacy maneuver the travails of hitching cross-country to blackmail Chris. They survive a bear attack, forest fires, and scorching disappointments that will keep readers on the edge of their seats, all to the backdrop of music from the time. Hannah learns who her real friends are, and she comes to understand something more about the complicated world in which she lives.

    Nancy Thorne’s The Somewhere I See You Again will have readers laughing and crying and rooting for Hannah and Stacy as they brave the open roads of Canada during the Vietnam crisis era, searching for salvation and a better life. What they find, however, is so much more fulfilling. Highly recommended.

     

      5 Star Best Book Chanticleer Reviews round silver sticker

    • COWBOY by Bob C. Holt – Literary Fiction, Vietnam Era Coming of Age, Literary

      COWBOY by Bob C. Holt – Literary Fiction, Vietnam Era Coming of Age, Literary

      Love is at the center of Cowboy, a novel set in the turbulent 1960s. Love of family, friends, country, love of exploring your personal freedoms, and of course, the love you can experience when you’re young that hurts so bad you can taste it.

      Jim Davis is a Texan, born and bred, who knows early on he must sample life away from the insular farm life of his small home town. Life at home is complicated by the turbulent relationship with a highly religious hard-driven father and a younger, football-star brother. Love of country and love of God are never far from the life of his family, but neither is Jim’s love of girls and sex, which carries a level of complexity all its own.

      Jim’s plans for his own future become even more problematic when his father insists that he join the military. When he enlists in the Army, Jim becomes an officer, and, thanks in part to his completion of a dangerous mission—and his girlfriend, the daughter of a general—a successful life in the military seems all but assured.

      Except he’s not biting. What else does the world offer? Jim leaves the military, winds up as a student at an eastern university, and discovers for the first time the drugs, sex, anti-war sentiments and other new feelings that became everyday experiences to others of his generation. All that becomes secondary to his relationship with Trish, the girl he falls in love with, who provides him with even greater complexities and harder choices that he could have ever foreseen. Can he allow her emotional roller coaster to control his life? Then again, can he truly live without her?

      While their relationship is the centerpiece of Cowboy, the novel also provides a sketchbook of the times as seen by a young man who doesn’t necessarily buy into the social revolution in the glowing terms as do many of his contemporaries. Setting aside all that, Jim’s willingness to wait out the twists and turns of Trish’s life will ring true for anyone of any generation who has entered the country of love and discovered there are no paved roads and no roadmap.

      To 21st Century readers, this is a historical novel. It takes place more than a half-century ago when so many of the social mores were first challenged by millions of young people across the world. How people talk to each other sometimes feels stagy. But it still rings true, both to the times and to the emotional makeup of the many characters who appear throughout the novel.

      While Cowboy has the shape and feel of a memoir, it’s a worthwhile read for anyone who wants to remember the ‘60s or has a curiosity about that fabled era that their parents and/or grandparents lived through. More important, however, is the love story of Jim and Trish. The dynamics of their fragile love ring true for anyone of any age.

      Cowboy by Bob Holt won CIBA 2018 Somerset First in Category in the SOMERSET Awards for literature.