Before the Great Crash the Cory family moves from a Bronx apartment to rent a bungalow in Queens, which seemed in contrast virtually rural to them. The father loses his job, but being good with his hands picks up many jobs as a carpenter repairing and renovating homes in a wealthy section; the mother, Bridget, also pitches in minding a child and doing laundry. Meanwhile there are chapters pertaining to the growth of the young boy, Johnny, and his friends at play and school. There is a strong sense of growing up and schooling in the 1930s. Johnny’s father dies. The lad crawls into himself for a time—distant from his close friends, Sally and Janie, both of whom react differently to the death. As he approaches his teens, Johnny is ambivalent in his feelings for Janie and Sally: a rather strange triangle evolves — conflict of soul and heart. Ray, Johnny’s brother, joins RAF well before Pearl Harbor. Bridget reacts: "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I’d rather you had as strong a calling for the priesthood! But, no, you’re Johnny Cory’s boy, all right—except he’s spinning in his grave right now in that you’re going off to fight for England!" Meanwhile, Pamela—the voice of war from an English refugee— describes the Blitz to their 9th grade class. She becomes close to Sally who uses her to start up a war-effort club. As Johnny gets closer to seventeen, he is anxious to join the Marines, but not before he renews his relationship with Sally who refers to him as her Essex in exile. Sally is temporarily shattered by her grandmother’s death. Janie overcomes her tormenting resistance to wakes. After Pearl Harbor, Janie, always a backdrop, in light of Sally’s dominance, inconspicuously matures: she criticizes Sally for melodramatically viewing the war as stimulating. Janie notes, “What bothers me more are the girls [at school]; the way they brag about their boyfriends being in the service and can’t wait for them to get home on leave so they can date and hang on the arm of one in uniform.” A touch of irony here considering she couldn’t, though deeply troubled, be prouder when Johnny enters the Marine Corps. While he is away the girls and his other friends illustrate rapid maturity in the war effort and concern for him in the thick of battle. What follows are extraordinary scenes of combat, and intriguing revelations and conflict on the home front. Both volumes dramatically portray the “greatest generation.”

First Review

The sense of time and place beyond description is by actions and perceptions of an assortment of characters at school, play and work while coping with a difficult economy, underlying questions of death, further triggered by the approaching war.

The reality of war comes to the forefront of the children’s awareness when an English girl, who experienced the Blitz, joins their ninth grade class. Then deeply implanted in the consciousness when the protagonist joins the Marines.

Author Bio

Born at home in the Bronx, Throgs Neck, long before the bridge was built and grew up in the Depression. In early ‘44, I joined the Marine Corps. And was in the first wave at Okinawa. After the war, thanks to the GI Bill, I went to college and later became a high school English teacher, and am now retired.