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Historical fiction at its best! This riveting World War II novel is an action thriller that follows incredibly real characters in the years leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack and in the desperate months immediately following it. Dade Bowie and his fellow submarine commanders in the Pacific find that their torpedoes are shockingly unreliable, meaning they must fight not only the Japanese, but a naval bureaucracy that continues to insist that the fault lies not in the Mark XIV torpedo or in its state-of-the-art Mark VI exploder, but in the ineptitude of the submarine commanders. Dade’s escape from a life of grinding poverty in rural West Texas was an appointment to the U. S. Naval Academy. It was here he pursued his lifelong dream of becoming a naval officer and left behind a home filled with hatred and hopelessness. Now he finds himself torn between a loyalty to his crew and the oath he took years before to obey the orders of his superiors. If he modifies the torpedo exploders to bypass the magnetic influence circuits, he believes he has a far better chance of sinking Japanese ships and of bringing his crew home safely from each patrol. If he is discovered, he faces a general court martial and time in a naval prison. The woman Bowie loves, Rachael Wyer, spent 20 years as a missionary in Japan, and left when Japanese naval cadets brutally murdered her husband in early 1941. Recruited by the Office of Naval Intelligence to translate intercepted classified Japanese coded messages, she fights the war in her own way by providing actionable intelligence concerning the movements of Japanese convoys and naval task forces, intelligence that is flashed to submarines and surface vessels via top secret ULTRA messages. Both Rachael and Dade join forces to fight the Japanese, fear, and their own inner demons. More than a book about submarines and codebreakers, this is a book about loyalty. We all feel bound to a number of things and people, like family and friends, organizations, our religious and political beliefs, and our nation. We’ve made certain solemn commitments to some of them, from wedding vows to the oath we took upon entering military service. The characters in this book struggle with loyalties to their own moral codes, to a loved one, to the United States Navy and its orders and regulations, to superior officers, and to shipmates. What happens when it is not possible to be loyal to all at the same time? When this happens during wartime, choosing between conflicting loyalties can tear a person apart because war inevitably brings death into an already complex and difficult equation. This book also examines the nature of fear.
Genre: Historical
Genre: Historical
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