The Ambassador's Son (Josh Thurlow Series #2) [Hardcover]

Homer Hickam (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 24, 2005

It's 1943 and the Americans and Japanese are fighting a deadly war in the hot, jungle-covered volcanic islands of the South Pacific. The outcome is in doubt and a terrible blow has fallen on American morale. Lieutenant David Armistead, a Marine Corps hero and cousin of the President of the United States, is missing and some say he's gone over to the enemy. Coast Guard Captain Josh Thurlow and his ragtag crew are given the assignment to find Armistead, though not necessarily to bring him back alive. Recruited in the hunt is a tormented and frail PT-boat skipper nicknamed "Shafty" who is also known by another name: John F. Kennedy. When Josh is stranded in the jungles of New Georgia with a mysterious, sensual woman who has a tendency to chop off men's heads, it's up to Kennedy to come to the rescue and complete the mission. But to procure a gunboat, he first has to play high-stakes poker with a young naval supply officer called Nick who happens to be the best gambler in the South Pacific. Nick has another name, too: Richard M. Nixon. Based solidly on historical fact with echoes of James Michener, The Ambassador's Son is a thrilling tale of the South Pacific and adventure fiction at its finest.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Following The Keeper's Son, this is the second in Hickam's superb series about the WWII adventures of U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Josh Thurlow and his daffy crew of coastal North Carolina misfits. In 1943, Josh and his men are fighting the Japanese around the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. Josh, tough as a boiled owl, likes to carry an Aleut ax and drink Mount Gay rum. Still, when he's assigned a curious secret mission, he's not sure he's up for it. A Marine lieutenant, David Armistead, a cousin of President Roosevelt and Josh's friend, has deserted, and Josh is ordered to find him and bring him back for court-martial, or kill him. Josh teams up with another disgraced officer, U.S. Navy Lt. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who is awaiting his own court-martial for losing his boat, PT-109. Josh and JFK are an interesting pair--the one a rough cob, the other a Harvard blueblood--and together they get themselves into loads of trouble with Japanese soldiers, gangs of cannibals, a beautiful native girl who chops off heads and a nutty cargo cult leader. Add fierce, bloody battles and steamy tropical island romance, as well as hilarious cameos by Richard Nixon as an enterprising supply officer and James Michener as a navy historian, and the result is a funny, tightly wrapped tale of wartime action.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In The Keeper's Son (2003), Hickam introduced a character he intends to make recurrent, Coast Guard Lt. Josh Thurlow, who, in that first novel, worked to keep merchant ships off the North Carolina coast safe from German U-boats during World War II. Now, in the second installment of the series, we find Lt. Thurlow stationed in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, placed there by the secretary of the navy himself, to inspect navy operations as the forces of imperial Japan are to be at least kept in check and hopefully put into retreat. A certain crisis develops, however, when a lieutenant apparently deserts, and the lieutenant happens to be an ambassador's son. To help with his pursuit of the missing officer, Thurlow enlists the aid of a PT-boat commander, John F. Kennedy. Now we are off and running on a very exciting high-seas, wartime adventure tale, which combines the color, humanity, and humor of the play and movie South Pacific and the TV series Black Sheep Squadron. Characters, including JFK, are created with sympathy and nuance, and Hickam demonstrates a great understanding of both the remoteness and the strategic importance of this corner of the world. The first novel in the series was popular, as this one will prove to be. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; First Edition edition (February 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312301928
• ISBN-13: 978-0312301927
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,352,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Homer Hickam (also known as Homer H. Hickam, Jr.) has been a coal miner, Vietnam combat veteran, scuba instructor, NASA engineer, and now a best-selling author.

Homer has always loved to write. In the third grade, his teacher, after reading one of his short stories, predicted he would make his living as a writer. He did a lot of other things and had a lot of other interests but writing was always his true passion. After returning from Vietnam, Homer started selling his work. At first, he mostly wrote about his scuba diving adventures for a variety of different magazines and then branched out into writing articles on history, mostly World War II but also some NASA-related work. His first book, Torpedo Junction (1989), the story of the U-boat war along the American seaboard during World War II, was a military history best-seller. It was published by the Naval Institute Press and Bantam. It is still popular and in print.

In 1998, Delacorte Press published Hickam's second book, Rocket Boys: A Memoir, which became an instant classic. It is often studied in schools and picked as a community or library read of the year. It has been translated into a dozen languages, most recently Vietnamese and Chinese.

In February, 1999, Universal Studios released its critically-acclaimed film October Sky, based on Rocket Boys. When speaking to groups, Homer often apologizes to the young women in the audience for not actually being Jake Gyllenhaal (Jake played him in the movie). Jake Gyllenhaal, when speaking to groups, often apologizes to adult women for not being Homer Hickam. They're actually good friends.

In 2011, Rocket Boys the Musical continued development on its march to Broadway (www.rocketboysthemusical.com). Homer is co-writer of the musical.

Homer's first fiction novel was Back to the Moon (1999) which has proved enduringly popular for more than a decade.

There are three more books in the "Coalwood" series after Rocket Boys (aka October Sky). They are The Coalwood Way, Sky of Stone, and We Are Not Afraid.

Homer also has a series of popular novels about Josh Thurlow, a Coast Guard officer during World War II. The series began with The Keeper's Son (2003), followed by The Ambassador's Son and The Far Reaches.

In 2008, his novel Red Helmet, a romantic love story set in a West Virginia coal town, was published. My Dream of Stars, the memoir of Anousheh Ansari, was published in March, 2010.

The Dinosaur Hunter, a mystery/western novel set in the ranch lands of Montana and reflecting Homer's love of both Montana and paleontology, was published in Nov. 2010.

His next novel, titled Crater, is set on the moon 120 years in the future and will be published April, 2012. It is the first in a planned trilogy known as the Helium-3 series.

Mr. Hickam continues to love the sea. He scuba dives and snorkels in the world's oceans. A new avocation is amateur paleontology. He has discovered two of the approximately forty T.rexes ever found.

Mr. Hickam is married to Linda Terry Hickam, an artist and his first editor and assistant. They love their cats and share their time between homes in Alabama and the Virgin Islands.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great epic novel, August 11, 2005

By 

Constant Reader (South Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ambassador's Son (Josh Thurlow Series #2) (Hardcover)

Just finished Hickam's last Thurlow epic. I was enthralled throughout. Great characters, though far tougher and more nuanced than in the Keeper's Son. Once a reader is immersed in Hickam's Thurlow world, it is as if you have stepped into a vivid, non-stop place. This is not a standard World War II novel. There is something very different about the Thurlow stories. For one thing, there is woven in the text a spirit unlike anything I've ever read. Penelope and Joe Gimmee and Dave the megapode are all more spirits than real it seemed to me. There are matters of the heart and soul that peek out through the story that are perhaps disappointing to anyone who just wants to read a war story. Hickam's Thurlow novels are going for something else and this one has cranked up everything a notch. I quite often laughed out loud at the very comic style of some scenes and then the next page I was immersed in a terrible battle that was so real, it seemed like I was a part of. Maybe Hickam, who is a combat veteran of Vietnam, is bringing out the insanity of war. He's a writer to watch, this one, but not one to read if all you want is the ordinary.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PLEASE keep writing, Homer Hickam!, April 13, 2005

By 

Michael in Helena, Alabama "Michael" (Helena, Alabama) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ambassador's Son (Josh Thurlow Series #2) (Hardcover)

I can easily say that Homer Hickam is my favorite author. I was hooked when I read The Rocket Boys (October Sky) and Sky of Stone. Every book Mr. Hickam has written has been just as good as or better than the previous book, which is VERY high praise. Hickam manages to spin creative tales with interesting characters and interesting plot lines, time after time.

Some authors, after a little success, begin to get predictable, or they begin to lose their creative edge. Not so with Homer Hickam! In my opinion, there are two authors that consistently produce outstanding works - the great John Grisham and Homer Hickam. I can only hope that Mr. Hickam's career as an author turns out to include as many books as John Grisham has produced.

This is a wonderful, epic tale of World War II life, and, even for younger readers like myself, born two decades after World War II, we can almost feel like we knew what it was like to be there. I mean no disrespect to the honorable World War II veterans (and all other veterans) out there - I truly appreciate your service and I thank you for all that you did.

For a good, entertaining read, RUN OUT AND BUY THE AMBASSADOR'S SON! You WILL NOT be disappointed!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An interesting work, August 21, 2005

By 

Joe from Florida (Pensacola) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ambassador's Son (Josh Thurlow Series #2) (Hardcover)

Hickam is an interesting writer who does interesting work. I saw the movie October Sky and thought the guy was a rocket scientist but then read Rocket Boys and his other Coalwood books and was impressed by his ability to write. These "Josh Thurlow" novels are certainly a long way from his first novels but I also noted with some surprise that he wrote Torpedo Junction, an excellent U-boat non-fiction book I'd read many years before October Sky came along. So now that I've read both Josh Thurlows, I'm interested in anything else he has to write. The Ambassador's Son seems to me to be a bit "Catch 22-ish," though not so outlandish as that novel, a bit Michener's "Tales of the South Pacific" and also a bit of Hickam's wit and wisdom he showed in the Coalwood/Rocket books. Thurlow is intriguing as he is quite often wrong, very wrong in fact, in how he sees things. He has evolved quite a bit in the two books. He seemed simpler and sweeter in "The Keeper's Son" but has hardened in Ambassador's. Hickam is a clever writer and just when you think you're onto him, he switches gears. Quite often, he made me laugh. Both Penelope and Felicity in this novel are caricatures, yet I fell in love with both of them. How could a man not fall for women who are as likely to kill you as love you? The novel can be approached as an adventure, pure and simple, or, as I think it deserves, as a deeply moving tale of humans cracking under a great deal of pressure. Bravo to the real Jack Kennedy and Dick Nixon for fighting in that awful but awesome world Hickam has recreated here.