Blogger: Michelle Ule
Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.
They were sitting in the submarine wardroom on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean one morning, when the Commanding Officer entered and began his briefing for the planned war games. Two sentences in, the navigator looked up in surprise. Two more, and the executive officer cleared his throat. By the time the CO paused, all the officers were staring at him with wide eyes.
My husband, the chief engineer on the oldest submarine in the Atlantic that day in 1984, said, “Sir?”
The CO swiped his hand across his face. “Hmm. Is that what we’re really supposed to do, or was that in the book last night?”
Deadly silence in the service. Someone asked, “What book, sir?”
Can you guess?
That was our introduction to Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October.
Clancy deserves a post all his own–his writing story is amazing–but his early submarine books reflected our personal life like few before or since. It really was that true-to-life, and for years we told people interested in submarine life to read the book. Or see the excellent movie.
All you need for verisimilitude is the smell–so sit in a small closet with salty clothing, smoking a cigarette, spilling oil, and sweating like mad. Then you’ll really understand submarine life in all its senses–assuming you don’t take a shower for five days before hand.
It opened my eyes to what my husband experienced every day and made me appreciate him and his fellow sailors even more.
Clancy hit me again on an emotional level with his Red Storm Rising in 1986. The story of World War III, this one featured two submarine crews: men off the USS La Jolla and the USS Boston. When both submarines were sunk off the Greenland icepack, I had to set the novel aside. I was crying too hard to see the words.
I knew the CO of the Boston, and had friends on the LaJolla. Submarines weren’t supposed to be destroyed in my world. I couldn’t return to the book until I got past the horror of what it would have been like to lose someone on a boat.
Clancy wrote about machines and men; I knew the life of the women who waited for those boats and men. He gave me uncanny insight into a mystery–information I needed, but which came in an “entertaining” form. It felt almost too powerful to be endured.
Do you know other books like this? Have you ever been sucked into a book that describes a unique setting in such a concrete and full way that you finish it feeling as if you’ve lived the story? How did the author do it?
As a writer and military wife, I’ve had the great pleasure of critiquing Discarded Heroes–a military suspense series by Ronie Kendig. The first, Nightshade, will be published this July by Barbour.
The action in Nightshade is gripping, the characters deep and compelling, but the thing that sets these books apart is that each in the series of four (Digitalis, Wolfsbane, and Firethorn will follow at 6-month intervals) focuses on a special-ops veteran who struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder. Through story, we experience the scars of war, the ways PTSD affects warriors, and the effects it can have on their lives and their families. In each, faith plays a major role in healing and restoration.
Ronie has a degree in Psychology and has worked closely with military chaplains and mental health professionals through the VA hospitals in developing these books. In other words, she’s writing what she knows. The result is a vivid and empathetic insight into very private pain relieved by the love of God. It is my hope that this glimpse into a world few of us have experienced will build compassion, appreciation, and understanding as well as offering hope to the heroes among us.
I know I’m speaking heresy here, but the Shack was too close to home for me to finish. Someone handed it to me as a gift. I brought it on a flight to read. When I got to the part about the child disappearing, I closed it and never opened it again. Sorry. I have two little kids, and that’s my worst nightmare. No criticism intended; it’s just not for me.
Yes. WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen. How did she do it? Magic. Pure, beautiful magic that caught me tight in a web of words and plucked me right out of my chair and landed me gently and sometimes not so gently into the world and people and animals of a shabby depression era circus.
I tried reading Shusaku Endo’s SILENCE in late 1995 or early ’96, but had to put it down. We had just been pulled out of Colombia, because of the civil war, and my friend Ray Rising was still a hostage after being kidnapped about a mile from my home. Five members of New Tribes Mission in Colombia were also hostages. I was familiar with the Japanese history, so knew what was coming, and Endo’s story of missionary martyrdom was simply too real for me. But I had also not seen any TV in 15 years. I wonder how an author can reach an audience that watches two or three people murdered as part of ordinary nightly programming, seven days a week. We have to look for nerves that haven’t yet been seared, and those are becoming few and far between.
I just read Susan May Warren’s new book Sons of Thunder. The characters were so compelling that I felt like I learned their lessons with them. I think it was both excellent characterization and a unique ability to draw the reader into the emotion of the scene.
Actually, Bill, yours was the most common complaint about The Shack when I led the discussion for our church’s book club. I encouraged those who could get past it, to keep going. The book is about the dad’s response to the loss of his child, more than the brutal murder.
I appreciate your comments Lynn. As a now-retired military wife, there’s nothing I hate more than a civilian writing about us and getting all the details wrong.
And Brian, I’ve been thinking about your comments from a couple days ago–have you written about Fiddler on the Roof, other cultural events and your return to American life anywhere? I’d love to read an article on your reflections.
Michelle, thank you for asking. About 5 years after I got home, I spent almost a year writing an 80,000 word “epistle,” gave copies to family and friends, but never attempted to publish it. There is some good source materiel there, but writing it was mostly therapeutic. My current projects are all fiction, most unrelated to my experiences in Colombia. However, I think my experiences there add depth to even the fiction that may seem, on the surface, to be completely unrelated. My non-fiction has mostly been blog posts. One of the best may be this eulogy for a youngster I tried to help, but couldn’t.
http://blog.briantcarroll.com/2009/09/eulogy-for-oscar.html
It’s so very important to get details right and to make it “hit home.” Interesting thoughts in the comments about hitting TOO close to home. I have twin sons with speical needs (Asperger’s) and it frustrates me to no end to see them portrayed in books with such ridiculousness.
Lynn, thanks so much for mentioning Nightshade. Growing up an Army brat, marrying a man just discharged (medically) from the Army (so grieved him–he wanted to go career), it’s been a great honor to write about our heroes. I pray I do our heroes and their families justice.
If you want to find out what life about a drug sub is like go to the press release http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/04/prweb3899004.htm
This factual book describes how the US and other countries are being infiltrated by homemade submarines that are carrying up to 7 tons of cocaine to our coastline weekly