05/28/2018
Rindell’s satisfying third novel (following Three-Martini Lunch) sets a love triangle against WWII and a traveling barnstorming act. In 1943, FBI Agent Bonner arrives at the Newcastle, Calif., home of Louis Thorn to question him regarding the whereabouts of Harry Yamada, his former barnstorming partner, and Harry’s father, Kenichi, who have escaped from a Japanese-American internment camp. Suddenly, Bonner and Louis witness the takeoff and crash of a biplane. Authorities discover two bodies whom they believe are the Yamadas; Bonner suspects sabotage and investigates. The narrative then jumps back to 1940, when the young, plucky Ava Brooks meets Harry and Louis while traveling with her stepfather’s flying circus. She’s drawn to both young men. The narrative toggles back and forth between the early days of Harry and Louis’s daredevil act, the feud between their families, and Bonner’s investigation of Louis in Harry’s disappearance. At times, Rindell’s prose is stilted, and Ava’s con-artist stepfather is over the top. However, Rindell effectively incorporates the forced internment of Japanese-Americans in camps during WWII, and the fraught, complex friendship between Louis and Harry is as riveting as the truth behind the crash. Rindell’s sweeping generational saga will please fans of immersive, meticulously researched historicals. (July)
Suzanne Rindell takes to the heavens in this glorious story of two daring aviators during the Great Depression. She’s written an epic love story set against a time of upheaval, suspicion and change. A magnificent novel from a great writer.” —Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Kiss Carlo
“Wildly ambitious and filled with heartbreak (I love heartbreak), Suzanne Rindell’s third novel mesmerizingly pilots us through the Depression, the 1930s, Pearl Harbor, and the love one fierce young woman has for two very different aviators. Passionate, profound and an absolutely daredevil act of imagination.” —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times-bestselling author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World
"In this blazing saga about a flying circus, Rindell performs death-defying plot twists that race toward the shocking conclusion. Eagle & Crane is a majestic historical novel that is profoundly relevant in today’s world." —Fiona Davis, author of The Address and The Dollhouse
“A white-knuckled historical mystery and collision course of cultures, Eagle & Crane threads a fascinating tale through the half-silenced world of Japanese internment in America. Timely, expertly researched, and provocative.” —Dominic Smith, New York Times- bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
“Elegantly interweaving a lyrical love triangle with the spectacle of Depression-era barnstorming, the plight of Japanese Americans during the Second World War, and a bitter family feud spanning generations, Eagle & Crane poignantly plumbs still deeper waters: how far loyalty and friendship can be tested, and what it means to be an American.” —Lyndsay Faye, Edgar-nominated author of Jane Steele and the Timothy Wilde trilogy
★ 06/01/2018
Historical fiction fans will delight in this romantic mystery set in World War II California. Louis Thorn and Haruto "Harry" Yamada have grown up as neighbors, despite the Thorn family's claim that the Yamadas, a Japanese immigrant family, stole part of their land. The pair of daredevils become unlikely comrades after joining the Earl Shaw Flying Circus as wingwalkers Eagle and Crane. There they share a love of flying and of Ava, Earl's spunky, independent stepdaughter. Though both partners need the money from their aerial stunts, their relationship is complicated by racial tension, family, and love. In the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Harry's family is interned at Tule Lake simply for being Japanese. Then, a mysterious plane crash brings a determined FBI agent to the Yamada home to investigate. Will he uncover the truth or will guilt from his past consume him? VERDICT Rindell joins the ranks of popular historical fiction authors Kristin Hannah and Kate Quinn with this fast-paced, gripping novel that compellingly explores a tumultuous era of 20th-century history. [See Prepub Alert, 3/1/18.]—Laura Jones, Argos Community Schs., IN
2018-04-16
Harry Yamada and Louis Thorn work together as stunt pilots—close but competitive friends—until World War II upends their lives.In 1943, an FBI agent named Bonner arrives in Newcastle, California. He's investigating Harry Yamada and his father, Kenichi, who've recently escaped from an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, and wants to know if they've returned to the farm they signed over at the war's outbreak to their neighbor Louis Thorn, at the time Harry's flying partner and now a flight instructor for the Air Corps. As Bonner questions 23-year-old Louis on his front porch, the two men are shocked to watch a plane fall out of the sky in a fiery crash. Inside are two bodies, one identifiable as Kenichi, the other charred beyond recognition but assumed to be Harry. Not long afterward, Ava Brooks, who has supposedly been helping Louis care for the Yamadas' orchard, turns up at the house. Soon the novel is moving back and forth in time, interspersing Bonner's investigation of the crash with the evolving prewar love triangle of Louis, Harry, and Ada—who met in 1940 when the two young pilots joined Ada's con-artist stepfather's barnstorming troupe—as well as with the history of the multigenerational feud between the Yamadas, portrayed as upstanding, almost saintly immigrants, and the struggling, less sympathetic Thorns. Bonner's growing obsession with the case and the mysterious sexual attention he enjoys from the young landlady of a Newcastle boardinghouse are two of the contrived threads with which Rindell (Three-Martini Lunch, 2016, etc.) eventually ties up the flimsy plot. While the Yamadas' unfair treatment clearly alludes to today's immigrant experience, what is more developed is the character study of Louis Thorn, who faces conflicted loyalties and complex moral choices.Overlong and woodenly earnest, without the leavening wit of Rindell's The Other Typist (2013), the novel does cohere in its attempt to plumb the complexities of love and hate.