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MWSA Review
In Ron Miner’s The Last Word, the author guides the reader on a fact-filled journey into personal remembrances of long-ago battles in an era before most of us were born—deftly describing places we have only read about in history books.
The year is 2038. Reporter Dan Callahan, from the small-town Winona Bulletin, is assigned to interview the last known surviving veteran of World War II: 112-year-old Navy aviation machinist/gunner Owen Trimbel. As he makes the three-hundred-mile trip across the state in his iCar with his artificial intelligence assistant Samantha, Dan wonders why he was chosen and not some fancy hot-shot journalist from the big Minnesota dailies.
Dan has done his research, and his questions are ready for the interviewee. But he is not prepared for who awaits him. Owen is far from a frail, run-of-the-mill centenarian. From the beginning, Dan is mesmerized by the stories woven from this remarkable warrior’s memory—witnessing the attack on Pearl Harbor and enlisting at age 15, transiting the Panama Canal on a troopship, flying onboard the Navy’s Catalinas with the famed Black Cat Squadron and later the B-24 Liberator, and traveling throughout the Pacific Theatre. Owen shares his warm and often heart-wrenching personal life experiences—tapping into emotions that had been locked away for many years. He revels in the joy and love he has for his wife, daughter, and his rural Minnesota upbringing. Dan soon realizes he has been given a unique gift, and his respect and admiration for the older man grows stronger with each conversation.
Miner has done a masterful job in transporting the reader on the ride of a lifetime—an exceedingly long and rich lifetime. His characters are likable, real, and well-developed. The details in Owen’s stories are vivid, and his language colorful and humorous. Despite some minor technical glitches, readers will devour the tale until its unexpected end.
Review by Sandi Cathcart (July 2020)
Author's Synopsis
A small town journalist is tasked with the most important assignment of his life––a conversation with the last surviving World War II veteran. And the man is willing to talk.
Gleaned from real life filmed interviews with ten squadron members, this novel is a poignant tale of a life well lived, and an evocative legacy of rescue missions and night flight from New Guinea to the Mariana Islands of World War II’s South Pacific.
Dan Callahan’s next three days take him on a pilgrimage of over one hundred years in the life of Owen Trimbel, a Great Depression-era Minnesota farm boy. Owen’s story begins with an unforgettable visit to an uncle’s home near Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Over the next hours and days, he enchants Dan with his collective wisdom, humor, and philosophy––from the intricacies of attaching a plow to a mule to firing the .50 caliber machine guns from his PBY Catalina’s waist hatches.
Dan soon realizes that he currently occupies a rare instant in the trajectory of history: he can actually speak with an individual who lived the World War II experience––and it is something that will end with Owen.
The Last Word takes us on missions over an endless sea, lacing together stories of duty, friendship, responsibility, and ninety-year-old secrets.
ISBN/ASIN: 978-0-578-67537-4
Book Format(s): Soft cover
Review Genre: Fiction—Historical Fiction
Number of Pages: 275