From Publishers Weekly
In the solid latest from veteran novelist Doig (
The Whistling Season), 11 starters of a close-knit Montana college championship football team enlist as the U.S. hits the thick of WWII and are capriciously flung around the globe in various branches of the service. Ben Reinking, initially slated for pilot training, is jerked from his plane and more or less forced to become a war correspondent for the semisecret Threshold Press War Project, a propaganda arm of the combined armed forces. His orders: to travel the world, visiting and writing profiles on each of his heroic teammates. The fetching Women's Airforce Service Pilot who flies him around, Cass Standish, is married to a soldier fighting in the South Pacific, which leads to anguish for them both (think Alan Ladd and Loretta Young). Meanwhile, Ben's former teammates are being killed one by one, often, it seems, being deliberately put into harm's way. Doig adroitly keeps Ben on track, offering an old-fashioned greatest generation story, well told.
(Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Review
"Doig's book is really about our strong history of storytelling, and the variety of ways we spin out words, especially during and about war times...it feels quite right to call Doig's writing a part of Americana." (
The Oregonian )
"Though this novel revolves around one resilient American theme (that championship season), it's really about honor, loyalty, and the character and courage that war creates--and reveals." (
Bloomberg News )
"Ivan Doig is a fearless storyteller...
The Eleventh Man trembles with the weariness of the modern age toward carnage--a war novel with an anti-war heart." (
The Seattle Times )
"Doig incorporates all the elements of a good novel: an intensifying love interest, the drama of war, repeated moments of life-or-death intensity, the complexity of multple story lines, historical curiosities, seamless prose, and even a winning football team." (
Rocky Mountain News )
"
The Eleventh Man is about loyalty and survival and sacrifice--and love--and remains intensely suspenseful and moving throughout." (
Scott Turow )
"In nearly thirty years of book writing, Doig has rarely disappointed his readers,
The Eleventh Man gives us the twelfth link in that satisfying literary chain." (
Missoulian )
"
The Eleventh Man might well be the very best thing Doig-- an acclaimed and respected author-- has done to date. I loved every word." (
January Magazine )
"Vividly evokes a prior time and way of being. It takes a serious view of war and the practitioners of war, and looks hard at the meaning of heroism." (
Washington Post )
