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- Review: French Letters/Virginia’s War: Tierra, Texas, 1944
Review: French Letters/Virginia’s War: Tierra, Texas, 1944
- By Christine Zibas
- Published February 17, 2009
- GENERAL FICTION REVIEWS
Christine Zibas
Reviewer Christine Zibas has spent all of her life in love with books, and most of her life working with words. She has a B.A. in Political Science from Western Illinois University and did advanced studies in politics and publishing at WIU, Oxford University, George Washington University, and Stanford.
For many years Christine was an editor in the
think tank world, editing books and reports on international
relations and military studies. She worked at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. and the Johns
Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, where she served as director of
publications. In London she was the editor at the International
Institute for Strategic Studies. To read more of Christine's Reviews CLICK HERE
Author: Jack Woodville London
Publisher:Vire
Press
ISBN: 978-0-9815975-0-8
This engaging trilogy,
French Letters, opens with a scene from a small Texas town, affected
like most of the country, by World War II. Populated by characters
both engaging and exasperating, the action is never dull. From a bump
on the nose to a baby bump, the activities in one small town easily
fill the first book in the series, “Virginia’s War: Tierra,
Texas, 1944.” And by the end of the first book, readers will be
wishing that they already had the next volume in hand.
The main circumstances of this story focus on Sandy Clayton, a small boy whose energy and interests always seem to keep him front and center of Tierra’s happenings, and Virginia Sullivan, a young woman whose recent pregnancy is less surprising to her than the activities of her own family. Whether it’s her newspaper-owning father announcing an elopement that never occurred or her brother Bart posting her personal letters on the bulletin board of the Post Office, something unexpected is always at hand.
Then there’s the back story of Virginia’s friends, the boys who went off to fight the war: Will Hastings (of the reported marriage), his brother Peter, Hoyt Carter, and Johnny Bradley, not all of whom will make it through. Whether set on the home front of Tierra, Texas, or on the fields of France or the islands of the Pacific, there is grief to be suffered, but also strength and companionship among these friends from Texas.
Author Jack London has given his readers a great opening salvo in “Virginia’s War,” something to sink their teeth into--a town worth exploring, interesting and complicated relationships, power struggles, and overshadowing it all, a World War. If London can keep up the pace of “Virginia’s War” into volume two, he will surely have a winning trilogy on his hands.
Click Here To Purchase French Letters Book One: Virginia's War