Brilliant from start to finish, this gripping novel features a boy who glamorizes war but eventually comes to a more balanced sense of what it’s all about. Trevor adores his 93-year-old World War II hero great-grandfather (GG) Jacob, but eventually discovers secrets that force him to reframe his unquestioning enthusiasm for fighting.

Chapters that depict Trevor and GG’s European 2020 pilgrimage (Trevor’s father also in tow) are interspersed with chapters that turn back time. The to-ing and fro-ing from modern tour to wartime-service memories is highly effective at increasing the tension and deepening understanding.

The 1944 scenes are full-immersion World War II; they drop the reader like a paratrooper into a harsh reality that makes the pulse race, eardrums pound and nose take in the acrid smell of gunpowder.

As the Normandy coast appeared, a dark strip in the gray predawn, an odd quiet descended on the troops around Jacob. It was their first glimpse of the objective they had been training for these many months. The urge to get there had been all-consuming. But now that it was before them, they recognized it as the place where many of their young lives would end. That was not merely a possibility; it was a cold, hard fact.

You are right there with the soldiers during their training, their white-knuckled ride across the English Channel, their D-day storming of the beaches, their inch-by-inch fighting through hedgerows and blood-soaked pastures, their need to take out a sniper’s nest, and the loss of friends.

When bullets were flying and shells bursting, his heart would beat so hard and so fast that he feared it might explode out of his chest. Those moments – sometimes hours; sometimes whole days – were so loud, so chaotic, so violent that they almost belonged to another universe. Then someone close by would be hit – wounded or killed – and reality would intrude once more.
At times, he had found himself surrounded by so many bodies – from both sides of the war – that it became difficult to remember that these had once been people.

Humor helps break up the nonstop tension:
The bunks were stacked five high. Mailboxes got more space than that. If you tried to turn over, you’d brush against the sagging backside of the guy in the bunk sixteen inches above you.
Jacob delivered a sharp knee into the rounded canvas of the berth directly over him. “Hey – quit hogging my sleeping space!”
The lump shifted and Beau’s outraged face peered down into Jacob’s bunk. “What’s the big idea, High School?”
“No wonder you washed out of airborne,” Jacob needled. “What parachute could hold up a caboose like yours?”
Many spent the twelve-day voyage leaning over the rail, violently seasick. Leland Estrada of Omaha was one of them.
“Hey Leland,” Beau called, “If you see a periscope down there, make sure to puke on it!”

History comes blazingly alive as the three retrace GG’s footsteps. The old man regales them with stories: decommissioning dynamite charges, digging foxholes, meeting French Resistance fighters, blowing up tanks and dodging snipers. Nothing is sugar-coated, nor is it gratuitous. GG’s crusty arrogance, Dad’s voice of reason and caution, Trevor’s patriotic idealism are all great foils for one another. The ending is both unpredictable and highly satisfying. Somehow, Trevor feels much older than 12 to me, and the writing feels more YA than MG, which is why I’d list the story as MG/YA. It’s over-convenient that characters with whom the three interact in France all speak fluent English. And the father’s comment to his son, “This isn’t a video” gets repeated a few too many times. But overall, this novel is a five-star read, and an important contribution to youth novels depicting war. Patriotic parents, parents who like to encourage an appreciation for history, parents who hope to temper a child’s obsession with war, and parents who would just like to transfer a child’s enthusiasm for video wargames to more time reading, all should all welcome this outstanding novel.

- PW