A Boy at War
 Harry Mazer
 (Guest Reviewer - Sandi von Pier)
 2001 Simon & Schuster
  ISBN: 0689841612


December 7, 1941: On a quiet Sunday morning, while Adam & his friends are fishing near Honolulu, a surprise attack by Japanese bombers destroys the fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Guest Reviewer Sandi von Pier writes:

Adam Pelko is a military brat attending civilian high school in Hawaii. He finds it difficult to make friends moving so frequently as his father is reassigned to new duties, so when Davi Mori & Martin Kahahawai befriend him he's glad & defiant against his father's wishes.

Lieutenant Emory Pelko, Adam's father, runs a tight ship at home & tells his son that people are judged by who their friends are. He doesn't approve of Adam's new friend Davi Mori whose parents are from Japan even if Davi was born in the USA. That makes Davi an American in Adam's eyes: not to his father. The choices in friends Adam makes affect his family.

Adam is faced with a dilemma: does he go with Davi or does he try to come up with a believable excuse because he can't tell Davi the truth -- he's embarrassed by what his father believes -- & Adam desperately wants friends.

The boys plan to go fishing & the next day they row out into the harbor & cast their lines. This simple fishing trip turns out to be the most tragic day of Adam's life as he watches the planes fly overhead & the explosion of the ship his father in on -- the USS Arizona.

The rest of the book progresses as if he is in a dream, he is pushed from child to sailor in minutes. Helping search the waters for live men, he can't believe what he is seeing.

Even as Adam struggles to survive the sudden chaos all around him, & as his friends endure the brunt of the attack, a greater concern hangs over his head: his father. During the subsequent days Adam -- not yet a man, but no longer a boy -- is caught up in the war as he desperately tries to make sense of what happened to his friends & to find news of his father.

Adam lives through the horror & tragedy. He left the house one morning on his bike & came home carrying a gun.

While the sort of thinking in this book really irks me, I realize this is about 60 years ago when people thought very differently. Harry Mazer is a powerful writer & A Boy at War: A Novel of Pearl Harbor is a page-turner!

More from Harry Mazer: SnowBound; The Last Mission; The Wild Kid; Who is Eddie Leopard; Twelve Shots: Outstanding Short Stories About Guns; The Dog in the Freezer: Three Novellas; Island Keeper; Solid Gold Kid; A Nonny Mouse Writes Again: Poems & Someone's Mother Is Missing.
(09/09/11)

Sandi von Pier
A RebeccasReads.com Guest Reviewer