Customer Reviews

The Last Liberator (Signet)

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Danny Esposito, aka Abe Cohen, is a man hiding from his past. He's changed his identity and joined the army, in an effort to escape those who might want to find him. What he doesn't count on is the war. When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, he finds himself sucked into the vast conflict. What he learns about himself and the world while fighting we change his destiny forever.

Interweaving Danny/Abe's story with a detailed acounting of the fateful attack on the Rumanian oil fields at Ploesti, this story combines a gripping story of the terrors and triumphs of combat with one man's story of self-discovery. The descriptions of combat are detailed and utterly convincing, and provide the backdrop for Abe's growing realization that there is more to life than he's ever expected. As someone who has always been fascinated by the men and machines that made up the Army Air Forces in World War II, this story kept me engrossed from beginning to end.

I haven't read a book this good in a long time. Author Jerry Yulsman himself flew on the Ploesti mission and evidently remembers all the sights, smells and feelings clearly. What's more, he has the skill as a writer to communicate these sensations well. I've read a lot of World War II aviation stuff, and this book comes closer than anything else I've seen to showing what the total experience was like. Yulsman's attention to detail in describing the bomb loading, aerial gunnery, moving around inside the Liberator, etc. is as welcome as it is rare in my experience. Yet the scene-setting description and attention to detail never overwhelms the plot of the story. Yulsman sets us up to believe that the protagonist's pilot is a jerk, and he is, but he turns out to be a stand-up guy in battle, which wasn't uncommon in reality. The protagonist, an Italian-American from "Hell's Kitchen" in New York, comes to embrace the Jewish faith in the end, but Yulsman handles this without getting heavy-handed. To sum up, anyone with an interest in World War II aviation will probably love this book. However, you probably won't like it as much if you don't have an interest in World War II aviation.