The Long March Home

 

Jimmy Propfield joined the army for two reasons: to get out of Mobile, Alabama, with his best friends Hank and Billy and to forget his high school sweetheart, Claire.

Life in the Philippines seems like paradise--until the morning of December 8, 1941, when news comes from Manila: Imperial Japan has bombed Pearl Harbor. Within hours, the teenage friends are plunged into war as enemy warplanes attack Luzon, beginning a battle for control of the Pacific Theater that will culminate with a last stand on the Bataan Peninsula and end with the largest surrender of American troops in history.

What follows will become known as one of the worst atrocities in modern warfare: the Bataan Death March. With no hope of rescue, the three friends vow to make it back home together. But the ordeal is only the beginning of their nearly four-year fight to survive.

Inspired by true stories, The Long March Home is a gripping coming-of-age tale of friendship, sacrifice, and the power of unrelenting hope.

My thoughts: This book is a well written, exceptionally researched story about three good friends who find themselves going from serving in the sleepy base near Manilla to being in the middle of the Bataan Death march and enduring the brutality of the Japanese through the course of WWII. It's horrible to read what some of the soldiers went through as POW's. I appreciated how the authors broke up the story with flashbacks to life before the war, through Jimmy's eyes. The heroine could have had more depth to her. And, the authors don't white wash how life in the military can be. I also felt like they handled some sensitive subjects well. Overall, a well written, hard to put down work of historical fiction. 

I received this book from Celebrate Lit. This is my honest review.