The Better Angels

Rating:
Summary: AN EXCITING COMING OF AGE NOVEL
Review: The Better Angels is an exciting coming of age novel set in the Virginia Tidewater region during the height of WWII in 1943. It reads rather like a combination of Spin and Marty meets American Graffiti during the war years. In this case, the characters are Shadow and Marty. The protagonist, Marty, is a budding young dreamer still in high school and mentored by the town librarian. Shadow, so nick-named because his real name, Lamont Cranston, is the same as the popular radio show crime fighter of that era, is the wild and crazy sidekick. Both boys accidentally stow away on a Navy aircraft carrier, are returned to shore via a Navy Avenger aircraft that becomes involved with a Nazi sub. As a result, they end up in a position to save FDR, Churchill, and Eisenhower's life during an hilarious adventure at the famous Biltmore Estate.
The action in this book screams along. The settings are well done and the dialog is both humorous and authentic (with amusing phonetic translations of the Tidewater dialect). The thought processes of untried young men stepping into sexuality and the violence of war is wondrously rendered. The changes the characters go through are momentous and unexpected, yet they make incredible sense. This is one exciting read! We rated it 5 Hearts. Bob Spear, HEARTLAND REVIEW

Rating:
Summary: The First Review
Review: When someone writes a novel about "life in the South", I am usually a little suspicious. Southern writers tend to emulate other Southern writers, who themselves tend to emulate each other, and what results is often a badly produced B-movie of "Pat Conroy Meets William Faulkner At A Sunday Tea Hosted By Carson McCuller For Flannery O'Conner" - starring James Dickey! And then once every twenty years or so along comes something like THE BETTER ANGELS.

This debut novel, played out in Norfolk, Virginia, and Asheville, NC, could have been written about practically any two young American boys chomping at the bit to get into World War II, but these two - Marty Eden and Lamont (Shadow) Cranston - are as unique to the South of 1943 as could be found. Unique, and yet as common and ordinary as red clay.

This is one great adventure story that keeps you on the edge of your pages. Lost and stowing away aboard an aircraft carrier; hitching a ride home in a Navy fighter/bomber; engaging and sinking a German sub; landing a battered and pilotless plane; being entertained by the President of the United States - and then foiling a German plot to assassinate the chief executive! Fiction? Fantasy? Lord, I don't know! But wonderfully exciting!

Robert A. Mills is a first class, master writer of suspense, drama, comedy and historical happenstance that rings with the clarity of truth, but leaves you with a tug at the base of your brain that says, "Wow! How could it be? I want to believe it, but . . ."

THE BETTER ANGELS is going to make one doosie of a movie.

Rating:
Summary: The First Review
Review: When someone writes a novel about "life in the South", I am usually a little suspicious. Southern writers tend to emulate other Southern writers, who themselves tend to emulate each other, and what results is often a badly produced B-movie of "Pat Conroy Meets William Faulkner At A Sunday Tea Hosted By Carson McCuller For Flannery O'Conner" - starring James Dickey! And then once every twenty years or so along comes something like THE BETTER ANGELS.

This debut novel, played out in Norfolk, Virginia, and Asheville, NC, could have been written about practically any two young American boys chomping at the bit to get into World War II, but these two - Marty Eden and Lamont (Shadow) Cranston - are as unique to the South of 1943 as could be found. Unique, and yet as common and ordinary as red clay.

This is one great adventure story that keeps you on the edge of your pages. Lost and stowing away aboard an aircraft carrier; hitching a ride home in a Navy fighter/bomber; engaging and sinking a German sub; landing a battered and pilotless plane; being entertained by the President of the United States - and then foiling a German plot to assassinate the chief executive! Fiction? Fantasy? Lord, I don't know! But wonderfully exciting!

Robert A. Mills is a first class, master writer of suspense, drama, comedy and historical happenstance that rings with the clarity of truth, but leaves you with a tug at the base of your brain that says, "Wow! How could it be? I want to believe it, but . . ."

THE BETTER ANGELS is going to make one doosie of a movie.