Hover: A Novel; by Anne A. Wilson

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MWSA Review
In the Navy's world of men, water levels the battlefield of love. 

In her romance, Hover: A Novel, Anne A. Wilson crafts a story of romance, guilt, forgiveness, and bravery in the wake of nightmares.

Lieutenant Sara Denning's goal as a Navy helicopter pilot is to remaining "a small dot,” get in and get it done without stirring the waters. Little does she know in her quest to do her best without creating waves, both happen naturally.

As a woman living in a predominantly man's world, Sara finds herself often floating her actions against the prejudices and biases of her peers and commanders. She recognizes that, although her reasons for attending the Naval Academy and becoming a pilot were in penance to drown her guilt, she actually enjoys her career. If only she can step aside and allow happiness to ebb in. 

When Lt. Denning meets an unassuming, strong, yet kind, colleague, the feminine qualities Sara tried so hard to submerse start rising to the surface.  Now, if only they can all manage to stay buoyant in the company of a traitor.

Anne A. Wilson casts a net over her reader and reels them aboard one word at a time, in Hover: A Novel.
MWSA Reviewer:  Sandra Miller Linhart
 

Author's Synopsis
Helicopter pilot Lt. Sara Denning joins a navy battle group with little fanfare—and that's just the way she likes it. After her brother Ian's tragic death, her career path seemed obvious: step into his shoes and enter the Naval Academy, despite her fear of water. Sara's philosophy is simple—blend in, be competent, and above all, never do anything to stand out as a woman in a man's world.

Somewhere along the way, Sara lost herself—her feminine, easygoing soul is now buried under so many defensive layers, she can't reach it anymore.

When she meets strong, self-assured Lt. Eric Marxen, her defenses start to falter. Eric coordinates flight operations for a Navy SEAL team that requests Sara as the exclusive pilot. This blatant show of favoritism causes conflict with the other pilots; Sara's sexist boss seems intent on making her life miserable, and her roommate and best friend, the only other woman on the ship, is avoiding her. It doesn't help that her interactions with Eric leave her reeling.

The endgame of the SEALs' mission is so secret, even Sara doesn't know the reason behind her mandated participation. Soon, though, the training missions become real, and Sara must overcome her fears before they plunge her into danger. When Sara's life is on the line, can she find her true self again and follow the orders of her heart before it is too late?
Anne A. Wilson's Hover is a thrilling, emotional women's journey written by a groundbreaking former navy pilot.

Veterans: Heroes in Our Neighborhood; by Valerie Pfundstein

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MWSA Review
Valerie Pfundstein's picture book, Veterans: Heroes in Our Neighborhood reminds us a hero isn't necessarily a stranger who lives far away.  Our neighbors, the grocer, the butcher, our coach - all could be a part of the growing and honorable group of heroes - Veterans, who don't wear badges or medals on their regular work clothes, and are not readily noticed to stand out in a crowd.

Each generation gives a portion of its numbers in service to our country. Pfunstein's book brings home awareness and appreciation of these unassuming heroes who work and walk among us daily. Through her book, she shares their sacrifices new generations of Americans who may one day join their ranks.

Veterans: Heroes in Our Neighborhood is a must for every school library in the United States.
Reviewed by: Sandra Miller Linhart

Author's Synopsis
Veterans: Heroes in Our Neighborhood is an engaging rhyming picture book for readers of all ages that fosters mindfulness of and appreciation for the brave service men and women who are also our family, friends, and neighbors.  These are the men and women who bravely served our great country and now humbly serve in our communities.

All Came Home: A World War II story told through the letters of Boat Group Commander, Joseph B. McDevitt; by Paul K. McDevitt

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MWSA Review
WWII Fast Attack Transports in the Pacific theater

I have read many novels and nonfiction books dealing with the Pacific war against Japan. They mostly dealt with combat ships, airplanes, and ground troops. But how did the troops and required supplies get to the island beaches? Where did the landing crafts come from? How were so many men and supplies delivered to the correct beach so quickly? Who moved the Army and Marines from island to island and then returned them to the U.S.? The answer is: Fast Attack Transports.

All Came Home is a story of life in America in the late 1930s and 1940s. A nation mired in the great depression where people struggled to survive — a land that young Americans in the 21st Century can hardly imagine. It is part of one page of the story of the Greatest Generation, the men and women, military and civilian, who through determination and sacrifice won World War II and turned America into a mighty nation, a superpower. 

One such young man was Joe McDevitt. While this is Joe’s story, compiled by his son through copies of personal letters, newspaper articles, and official documents, it is also his family’s story and the story of his ship, one of the ships that helped win the Pacific naval war, the USS Leon (APA 48), the “Lucky Leon” and her crew who all came back. 
I highly recommend this book and will retain my copy for my grandchildren when they are old enough to understand.
Reviewed by Lee Boyland
 

Author's Synopsis
"All Came Home" is a true story of junior reserve officer Joe McDevitt during WWII, as told through letters mailed home to his family. This is a quintessential American story about a youngster of German and Irish ancestry striving to achieve the American dream. Then comes WWII, and Joe postpones his driving personal ambition in order to enlist in the Navy. He joins the Pacific Amphibious Forces where men wage war on the open water in small boats. Could the Navy really make a warrior out of him… someone who thinks of nothing else but the sea and the war? A romance flourishes, and, like many of his peers, Joe must choose: marry now, and leave a young war bride behind, or wait to wed his true love when, and if, he returns? At war, he endures one bloody assault after another: ground-shaking bombardments, thundering artillery and mortar barrages, and the conviction that chance alone determines who lives and who dies. One way or another, all came home…

PAYBACK TIME!: America's Veterans Unite to Challenge VA for Overdue Benefits; by Earl "Dusty" Trimmer

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MWSA Review

Vietnam Vet Trimmer cluster bombs the VA

Author “Dusty” Trimmer delivers this credible PAYBACK TIME message across the VA’s minefield of issues that get stepped on by veterans deserving proper healthcare access and benefits.  Aging Trimmer still brings the fight!  Taking careful aim and switched to automatic fire, Dusty sprays and stitches the VA with valid complaints from every direction, with a major focus on the dying Vietnam-era veterans’ horrific dilemmas.  

Armed heavily with research, a useful index, and an extensive glossary, Trimmer shoots-scoots-communicates through multiple VA obstacles that returned warriors face.  He lays down suppression fire to cover current-era war fighters, provides insight into the political landscape that has/will create the VA obstacles, and triggers through multiple other VA fights, including insightful views on current VA Secretary Bob McDonald.  From a very personal perspective, Dusty Trimmer empties his heart out to help our veterans in a VA system that lacks much.  Way to take up the battle!

MWSA Reviewer: Hodge Wood
 

Author's Synopsis
Author Earl "Dusty" Trimmer was a Combat Infantryman in the Vietnam War. This Vietnam War Veteran's reason for writing his memoir is to bring awareness to Vietnam War veterans wounded in action (WIA), killed in action (KIA), missing in action (MIA), the plight of those veterans who are still living or those who have lost their battles to survive after coming home, and those war veterans struggling to live another day. Written from the heart and experiences of a combat infantry soldier in the Vietnam War, Condemned Property? takes a raw look at the Vietnam War and Vietnam War veterans. Author Dusty Trimmer believes the Vietnam War's biggest battle wasn't fought in Southeast Asia, but is currently being waged against the Department of Veterans Affairs in the United States. Author Dusty Trimmer's purpose of this book is to expose the system's mistreatment of Vietnam War Veterans. War is hell. Every war battle is bad for who is in it. The Vietnam War was a twilight zone.

Hook Up: A Novel of Fort Bragg; by William Singley

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MWSA Review
Life as a paratrooper in the peacetime 1950s
Hilarious, irreverent, irrelevant, racist, profane, vulgar, tragic: all describe the lives of teenage paratroopers in William Singley's Hook Up, a novel about of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg in the late 1950s. 

For those who served at Fort Bragg during that spit-polish era between wars, it is a nostalgic read as one remembers similar characters as those skillfully portrayed by the author. He was there, experiencing the agony of jump school and the thrill of leaping from a high-performance airplane, hoping that a canopy pops open to carry him safely to the ground. 

Most of the young men were draftees in those days, yet volunteered for the Army's elite only to count the days until their enlistment's end. There's Patterson, the kid from New Jersey who emerges as the lead character, struggling with maturity and proud to be a private first class. Margolin, the ROTC second lieutenant, is intimidated by everyone older and questions his sanity for joining the paratroopers, but somehow excels. Martin, the marionette first sergeant, treats his company as a private fiefdom. The cast goes on. Some you love, some you hate, some you admire, some you wonder how they ever got in the Army, much less the Airborne. 
The dark side of  Hook Up illustrates blatant racism in an Army barely ten years into desegregation, alcoholism, drugs, and disregard for individual responsibility.

Barracks humor that permeates the book may not be for everyone, especially uptight sergeants major who bristle when anyone tarnishes the image of their beloved 82nd or mothers horrified their precious son was exposed to such antics (but, God forbid, never participated). They too will chuckle when reminded of life back in the day of the OD uniform, spit-shined boots, and raucous bar hopping along Hay Street and Combat Alley in downtown Fayetteville... before the city cleaned up its image.

Singley describes his book as a historical novel. But for those who were there, the situations and attitudes happened. I recommend Hook Up. All the Way!
Reviewer: Joe Epley
 

Author's Synopsis
It was an Army between wars. Korea was a fresh memory for some soldiers and Vietnam was only an insignificant blip on the military radar. It was an Army in which reluctant draftees mixed with aimless volunteers looking for adventure and ways to test or confirm their manhood. In those days and in that Army, “hook-up” was a jump command for paratroopers rather than a romantic liaison.

Hook Up: A Novel of Fort Bragg takes us inside that Army and introduces fascinating characters who are struggling to become paratroopers and survive in a starch-stiff U.S. Army airborne regiment based at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. Side-by-side in that demanding trek are officers like Lieutenant Sy Margolin, a potential nebbish who instead becomes a strong leader, and enlisted men like Privates Willie Patterson and Scott Breslin, who challenge authority every step of the way to winning their paratrooper wings.

In Hook Up we get a close-up, very personal, and fascinating look at an Army that no longer exists—an Army populated with soldiers who have either learned hard life lessons or are about to learn them in a crucible where failure can land you in the stockade or in the morgue. From the rigors of barracks life to the raucous off-post adventures to the thrilling jump sequences, Hook Up is a fast-paced, thrilling story of military excellence pursued and human innocence lost.

Harnessing the Sky: Frederick "Trap" Trapnell, the U.S. Navy's Aviation Pioneer, 1923-1952; by Frederick M. Trapnell Jr. and‎ Dana Tibbitts

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MWSA Review
In all the years I have been following aviation, only a few of the early pilots in my library were Navy. So I eagerly read  Harnessing the Sky about Frederick M. "Trap" Trapnell's incredible experiences in test flight in the 1930s and 1940s. Since the book was written by family members, I expected more sentimentality than most biographies. However, while the tone was warm and the book was definitely an easy read, it was well-researched and competently indexed. It covered not only the man but also his era and will make an excellent source for other historians.

Military uses for aircraft were identified during World War I, only a few years into the era of flight. Ensign Trap was assigned to the USS Marblehead when he saw the potential for airplanes to support the Navy's most basic missions. As a result, he volunteered for flight in 1924, just as airplanes were beginning to be viewed as weapons. Aircraft carriers came of age with the help of pilots like Trap who helped perfect air/sea strategies and techniques.

If you are interested in aviation at all, this biography is a must.
Review by Joyce K Faulkner

Author's Synopsis

Harnessing the Sky is one of the best untold stories in 100 years of naval aviation. This biography fills an important void in the history of flight test and explores the legacy of the man who has been called “the godfather of current naval aviation.”

Vice Admiral Frederick M. Trapnell’s calculated courage advanced the frontiers of Navy test flying more than any other aviator during one of the most perilous and thrilling periods of aviation history. “Trap” entered the Navy at a time when flight testing was still in its infancy- when test pilots were more likely to be stunt men than engineers; when airplanes served an ancillary and undeveloped role in the fleet; when the airplane had not yet come into its own as a weapon of war. His vision and leadership shaped the evolution of naval aviation through its formative years and beyond.

When the threat of war in 1940 raised an alarm over the Navy’s deficiency in aircraft—especially fighters—Trap was brought in as head of the Flight Test Section to evaluate and direct the development of all new Navy airplanes. Trap expedited the evolution of two superb fighters that came to dominate the air war against Japan – the Corsair and Hellcat—by dramatically shortening test and development cycles for new prototypes.

This remarkable feat was repeated after World War II when Trap returned as Commander of the Naval Air Test Center to lead the Navy through the challenges of transitioning to jets. Recognized for defining the operating requirements for carrier-based jet propelled aircraft, Trap personally conducted the preliminary tests of the Navy’s first generation jets.

Over the course of two decades (1930-1950), Trap tested virtually every naval aircraft prototype and became the first U.S. Navy pilot to fly a jet. He pioneered the philosophy and perfected many of the methods of the engineering test pilot, demanding aircraft that pushed the performance envelope up to the limits of safety in all flight regimes. He insisted on comprehensive testing of each airplane with all of its equipment in all missions, conditions and maneuvers it would face in wartime fleet operations.

These innovations advanced the tactical capability of naval air power that have kept it at the forefront of modern aviation and stand as an enduring legacy to the man who is regarded as the foremost test pilot in a century of naval aviation.

Never Fear: The Life & Times of Forest K. Ferguson Jr.; by Bob D'angelo

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MWSA Review
Author Bob D’Angelo delivers a well-researched and informative story about a remarkable athlete who stormed Omaha Beach and paid a heavy price over 70 years ago.  Thanks to NEVER FEAR   The Life and Times of Forest K. Ferguson, we learn of a giant among men, Forest Ferguson.  
The author gathers infinite details about this man and our greatest-generation culture.

Small town legend Forest Ferguson becomes a Florida All-American football player and later plays football for the Army against NFL teams,  as was the style in the early forties.  In these and other sports like track, boxing, and basketball, “Fergie” excelled.  Without the author’s exhaustive research, this wonderful American leader’s walk in life and those he knew may have been forgotten.

Leaders were destined to storm the German pill boxes on D-Day.  D’Angelo reveals how Lt. Ferguson earned the Distinguished Service Cross on that grim day, June 6, 1944.  Although neurological deficits from battle injury on D-Day limited Ferguson for life, he still served… and his brand of discipline can be appreciated by any reader.  Thanks to the author, we are given the opportunity. 
MWSA Reviewer: Hodge Wood
 

Author's Synopsis
The story of Forest K. Ferguson Jr. is one of athletic greatness at tiny Stuart High School in the late 1930s and at the University of Florida in the early 1940s. "Fergie" was a World War Ii hero who won the Distinguished Service Cross on D-Day, and paid dearly for his bravery as his promising athletic career -- and life -- would be cut short by his sacrifices. Longtime Florida sports journalist Bob D'Angelo digs into the past and presents a fresh look at a man whose skills and courage were evident on the playing field -- and on the field of battle.

Fiddler's Green; by Jack C. Stoddard

MWSA Review
Jack Stoddard introduces the reader to a special final resting place known as Fiddler’s Green.  About halfway along the road to Hell, there lies a side road cut-off open only to members of the U.S. Army’s cavalry corps. It leads to a lovely encampment where these soldiers, both those who died in a battle somewhere, and those who have died after living for many years with the memories of their wars, can spend eternity with their comrades. Around their nightly campfires and in their six-man tents, the ghost-soldiers come to terms with the horrors of war and with the manner of their own deaths.

The story of how Sergeant Frank Saracino met his death in Vietnam in 1969 plays out against two backdrops. We meet the sergeant himself in his camp at Fiddler’s Green, where he can compare his experiences with those of men who fought in every conflict from the Civil War to Desert Storm. We also meet his family, a sister and a father struggling to understand why he died, and two of the surviving men from his unit who hold the answers to the family’s questions.

As in the case of a theater production that asks the playgoer to suspend his disbelief, so in this book the reader must accept the initial premise of the existence of a special kind of heaven reserved for cavalry soldiers, and their horses, too. If that idea offends, this may not be the book for you. The story itself, however, will ring true to every soldier who has survived the horrors of battle, and it will move those who have lost a loved one in warfare.
MWSA Reviewer: Carolyn Schriber
 

Author's Synopsis
Most soldiers like Jon learned to keep his mouth shut and silently toast his fallen comrades once a year at the dinner table, or maybe even manage to slip away and journey to the nearest local veteran's cemetery on Memorial Day to see all of those tiny American flags lined up dress right dress, waving row upon row across the grassy manicured fields. Jon didn't listen to the speeches being made, but rather just looked glassy eyed across the green covered memorial park as his mind searched for the faces that he had long ago forgotten... Yes there is a special look in a soldier's eye that tells another soldier that he has been there and has been baptized by fire. We call it seeing the tiger. Jon has seen the tiger, and as Jon's hair turns gray, and his body wrinkles from age, his dear friend Frank who lives at Fiddler's Green will always remain that twenty-two year old kid wearing his black beret and flashing that big smile.

Dagger Four Is OK; by Bill Norris

Review

At the age of eighteen, armed with a dream of flying and the desire to serve his country, Norman Gaddis enlists in the Army Air Corps in the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. After twenty-four years of service and seventy-two combat missions, he is shot down while in flight in an F-4 Phantom over Hanoi. He spends the next 2,124 days as a prisoner of war in the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, better known as the Hanoi Hilton. This true story follows Retired Brigadier General Norman C. Gaddis through his journey as he endures a thousand days of solitary confinement, physical and mental torture and nearly six years held captive as a POW. Relying on skills gained through his years of training and his love of and faith in both family and country he not only survives, but maintains his sanity and his honor. This is a story of strength, integrity and patriotism; a tale of a truly great American.

Reviewed by: Donald J. Farinacci (Nov 2015)

Author's Summary

At the age of eighteen, armed with a dream of flying and the desire to serve his country, Norman Gaddis enlists in the Army Air Corps in the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. After twenty-four years of service and seventy-two combat missions, he is shot down while in flight in an F-4 Phantom over Hanoi. He spends the next 2,124 days as a prisoner of war in the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, better known as the Hanoi Hilton. This true story follows Retired Brigadier General Norman C. Gaddis through his journey as he endures a thousand days of solitary confinement, physical and mental torture and nearly six years held captive as a POW. Relying on skills gained through his years of training and his love of and faith in both family and country he not only survives, but maintains his sanity and his honor. This is a story of strength, integrity and patriotism; a tale of a truly great American.

One Stick and a Waco; by J. M. Taylor

MWSA Review

J. M. Taylor scores again with his second in the “Stick” series, featuring everyday heroes from the famous 101st Airborne “Screamin’ Eagles.”

2nd Lietenant Alex Pfister barely survived D-Day, and is now on loan to the OSS.  Preparing for Operation MARKET GARDEN, he’s dropped behind enemy lines, and begins an odyssey that involves a beautiful American nurse POW, a downed Tuskegee airman, several paratroopers from different elements of the 101st, and a german shepherd named Max.  Will Pfister lead this ragtag bunch back to enemy lines, or will the Nazis find them and finish Pfister for good?

This book is well-written, with fast moving action and likable, realistic characters.  It’s realistic without being too graphic, and the reader feels drawn in to the action.  Taylor also works some humor into the story to keep more human.  This book definitely made me want to read the first in the series, and I look forward to the sequel.  Highly recommended.

MWSA Reviewer: Rob Ballister  

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A well-written, fast moving story of brave Screamin’ Eagles behind German lines during Operation Market Garden!

ISBN: 978-1-879043-25-1