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MWSA Review
Raw. Powerful. Penetrating. Unrelenting. These words keep coming back to me (in the way the main character’s ghosts keep coming back to him) as I consider the experience of reading A Quiet Cadence by Mark Treanor. Though categorized as fiction, this book has the feel of reality, the ring of truth: raw, powerful, penetrating, unrelenting truth. Characters are drawn so vividly and precisely that I felt like I knew them. I laughed with them. I cried with them. I ruined some of the pages of the book with my tears.
More than any other book I have read recently, this book addresses the horror that is war—any war—and its aftermath in a way that I (and probably any reader) could understand and feel. It informs us about combat, plunging deeply into the soul, while at the same time examining the aftermath for decades after the initial experiences.
From first page to last, I did not want to miss one sentence, one phrase, one word. The author crafted his story expertly and decisively. The quiet cadence of his words still echoes in my heart, and will for a long time to come.
Review by Betsy Beard (February 2021)
Author's Synopsis
Sometimes it takes years for a combat vet to understand what his war did to him when he was nineteen. And even longer to explain the cadence he has marched to since then to the people he loves.
Family and friends know Marty McClure as a kind, peaceful man. They aren't aware that when he was young, he plumbed the depths of terror, hatred and despair with no assurance he'd ever surface again. Now he needs to reveal what happened in Vietnam and how, with the help of his wife, Patti, Corrie Corrigan, a disabled vet, and Doc Matheson, a corpsman turned trauma surgeon, he makes peace with the ghosts that have visited his dreams all these years.
ISBN/ASIN: 9781682475065, B08C31Y763
Book Format(s): Hard cover, Kindle
Review Genre: Fiction—Historical Fiction
Number of Pages: 379