The Restless Wave

Starred review from August 1, 2024
An ambitious naval ensign and his girlfriend wake up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. "I love being at sea," muses young Scott Bradley James. "I could live forever out here." So he attends the Naval Academy, graduating in 1941. The story proceeds at an unhurried pace as it develops a decent but far from perfect man. Scott scrapes together the money for his girlfriend's illegal abortion, from which she dies. The academy tests the honesty and honor he had thought were at his core. A cheating scandal erupts; though guilty, he's not caught. Both events weigh heavily on his conscience as he begins his naval career. In Hawaii, a woman nicknamed Kai enters his life as an integral part of the tale. In bed with her, he's technically AWOL when Japanese fighters attack Pearl Harbor, but he's close enough to race back to his crippled ship, the USSWest Virginia, as the fight rages. Afterward, ambition, guilt, and jealousy gnaw at his soul, though he keeps the latter in check. Still, goddamn it, other people are getting the medals--like Chief Petty Officer John Finn, who earns a Medal of Honor--and not him? "It's like I wasn't even there," he thinks. He wants to be "in the center of the inferno." But he grows with his duties at sea and begins to show his mettle. Meanwhile, his relationship with Kai is on the brink of falling apart because he's gone so long and writes her only infrequently. Will she wait for him? Because a war is on, no one can plan ahead. A Marine might step on a land mine and alter the trajectory of his friends' lives far into the future. There is an interesting mix of fictional and historical characters: Scott and Kai are imagined, while the admirals and John Finn are not. (That hero was badly wounded at Pearl Harbor but lived to age 100.) Stavridis' own love of the Navy (where he's a retired admiral) shows well on these pages as he weaves war with the "career and personal voyage of Scott Bradley James." The ending leaves an uncertain future, as the war is far from finished, and the author plans a sequel. Readers will enjoy this first-rate naval fiction.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 12, 2024
Retired Navy admiral Stravridis (co-author of 2034 and 2054 with Elliot Ackerman) delivers a satisfying novel about a Naval officer during WWII. Raised in the Florida Keys, Scott Bradley James is taught sailing lore by his fisherman father, whose boat, Bella, is docked right alongside Ernest Hemingway’s Pilar. Scott goes on to attend the Naval Academy, where he makes his mark as a boxer. After graduating from the academy in 1941, Ensign Bradley is assigned to the battleship USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor. There, he begins a relationship with a beautiful half-Hawaiian college student, Kai Wallace. With his ship incapacitated during the Japanese attack on December 7th, Scott is next assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and the destroyer USS Fletcher, playing a vital role in the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, the Battle of Midway, and the disaster at Tassafaronga. He gains experience as a surface warfare officer, even as his obsession with promotion and medals might cost him Kai’s love. The author immerses the reader in the world of the Navy and cannily mixes fictional characters with real ones such as Admiral “Bull” Halsey and Commander Wade McClusky. This well-told tale is worthy of The Caine Mutiny and In Harm’s Way. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

September 15, 2024
After looking to the future in 2034: A Novel of the Next World War (2021), coauthored with Eliot Ackerman, Stavridis' latest is the coming-of-age story of a Key West native who rises in the navy during WWII. Scott Bradley James works on his father's boat, at one point encountering Hemingway, and starts at Annapolis in the late 1930s. Scott's outsider perspective of the hazing at the school is fascinating, as are his friendships with a fellow outsider, Sean Kelley, and Joe Taussig, from a lauded naval family. With war on the horizon, Scott graduates early and is posted to Hawaii just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Scott pushes to be on the front lines, and the descriptions of warfare at Midway and other Pacific theaters are exhilarating. Scott's career ambitions often make him quite callous, and his girlfriends, first Caroline and then Kai, jump in and out of the narrative when it suits Scott to be near them. At his best when detailing the organized chaos of war at sea, Stavridis is a gifted dramatizer of naval warfare.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.