From Booklist
Following
Buffalo Soldiers (1996), the first volume in a series of novels about the history of blacks in the U.S. military, comes the second installment, which deals with soldiers in World War I. David and Adrian Sharps are admitted to officers training school in preparation for leading black divisions in the dreadful struggle taking place on trench-filled and blood-drenched European soil. After their instruction and preparation, the two brothers are dispatched certainly not to the glories but to the gore of France, where slaughter of soldiers is the current name of the game. One brother returns stateside; the other one does not. The story of David and Adrian is not only the story of the alive-one-minute-but-perhaps-dead-the-next plight of every doughboy but also of the added weight of discrimination based on the color of their skin. Despite awkward phrasing and stilted dialogue, the narrative is grounded in authentic historic detail and moves with entertaining flow. For all readers of popular fiction with historical and sociological underpinnings.
Brad Hooper
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
An engrossing follow-up to Buffalo Soldiers (1996), the first in a series documenting the black experience in America's postCivil War military. Despite their age, Adrian and David Sharps (who served as youngsters with their sergeant major father in the Army's fin-de- siŠcle campaigns throughout Cuba) are allowed to reenlist as officer candidates when the US enters WW I. Along with other young black men, the sons of Augustus (a proud veteran of the 10th Cavalry) and Selona (his strong-willed wife) encounter a discouraging amount of prejudice. Selona and Augustus temporarily leave the family home in Arizona to help their lads over the jumps at a segregated training camp in Des Moines. Posted as lieutenants to the 93rd Division's 372nd Infantry Regiment, the boys ship out for France in the spring of 1918. Upon landing in St. Nazaire, however, the combat-ready troops are lumbered with stevedoring duties on the local docks. Risking courts-martial, Adrian and David besiege the chain of command to secure a battlefield assignment for their men. Fighting Germans alongside a Foreign Legion unit, the Sharps brothers survive the quotidian shocks of trench warfare on the Western Front until the Meuse-Argonne offensive. During this bloody but decisive engagement, David loses his life and Adrian is gravely wounded (albeit not before winning a Croix de Guerre and DSC). Invalided back to the States minus his left arm, Adrian still has the battered sword Augustus presented to him. At the close, in 1943, Adrian passes the weapon on to his own son, who's home on leave after qualifying as an Army Air Corps pilot at Tuskegee Institute. A fine addition to the author's generation-spanning saga, which, without undue fanfare, offers object lessons in such virtues as fidelity, honor, and tradition as well as a full measure of pulse-pounding action. (Radio satellite tour) --
Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
