Genre: Adventure
Description:
The protagonist, Hiram is a Vietnam veteran, and carries a
lot of guilt. He makes a very small living from flying his battered Cessna on
whatever jobs he can pick up, and renting out half of his house. He has issues.
The story takes us through from Spring, to 9/11 and its aftermath, in 2001. The
action takes place around the Texas/Mexico border.
Author:
Henry Rausch was a submariner for 20+ years.
He did some hush-hush things for the USA, deep underwater. He retired in 2005. Now
he enjoys flying small planes, and has a lot of experience in this area. He has
written about his submariner experiences in Submerged which was very
well received, and won prizes.
Appraisal:
Hiram is not really a likeable character.
But then, the book is set in 2001 – a third of a lifetime ago, in my case.
Attitudes have shifted: some of them. And, of course, some of them never
shifted at all, and some of them are circling back around. Am I being a bit
gnomic? Well, it’s that sort of book. Just when I thought I had Hiram
pigeon-holed as a woman-objectifying red-neck the book takes flight (if you’ll
pardon the pun). He falls in love. He starts mercy flights for rescue dogs.
This leads onto rescuing some of the people who daily try to cross the
Mexican/Texas border on foot. He sees it as atoning for a perceived, fatal,
error he made in ‘Nam. But perhaps the only error in war is starting one…
Hiram and the lovely Lucy for whom he falls
are both old enough to know better. But their developing relationship is, none
the less, sweet passionate and good for them both.
The ferrying of immigrants across the
Mexican border turns out to be not as secret as Hiram had believed. Border
Patrol go to some lengths to catch him. But one man and a battered Cessna can
do much once they are air-borne.
For much of the book I feared Raush was
displaying firearms over the mantlepiece which were not going to get fired, rather
than building plot. I was wrong. Most of what he puts on the page is used in
the end. Trouble is, the setting up (and the occasional excursion) does tend to
reduce pace. As do the lengthy technical explanations of what exactly Hiram does
with his Cessna.
But if you enjoy adventure which leans
fairly hard on the technical, there is much to enjoy here.
And 2001 Hiram turns out to have some
interesting humanitarian opinions which are once again matters for debate under
the current (2025) regime. This is one of the great things you can do with
fiction. It can’t be political can it, because it all happened a long time ago.
Yes, in some ways this is an historical novel – and yet it all somehow seems so
now …
Oh, and the splash of magic is a delight.
Buy now
from: Amazon US Amazon UK
FYI:
Format/Typo
Issues:
The variation in formatting is slightly odd.
This reviewer spent time trying to work out if it was deliberate and
meaningful, or not. Not, I decided. So don’t you waste time on that.
Rating: ***
Three Stars
Reviewed
by: Judi Moore
Approximate word count: 100-105,000 words
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