In the Shadows of the Sun [Paperback]

Alexander Parsons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 6, 2006

Award-winning novelist Alexander Parsons takes us from the scorched battlefields of World War II’s Pacific front to the badlands of America’s desert southwest in this starkly evocative novel about a ranching family living at the dawn of the nuclear age.Even as Jack Strickland fights the Japanese in the Philippines, his family in New Mexico clashes with the U.S. government, which intends to evict them from their ranch and turn their land into a bombing range. In the midst of this, news from a hemisphere away and antagonisms and temptations close to home threaten to split the family from within, their struggles and fortunes vividly illustrating America’s wartime progression into the modern era.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this deeply moving second novel, about the struggles of a New Mexico ranching family during World War II, Parsons (Leaving Disneyland) traces the effects of war at home and abroad. Ross Strickland and his brother, Baylis; their wives, Sara and Alida; and their children all live together, tending cattle and working the land. As America prepares for war, Ross and Sara's headstrong son, Jack, enlists in the army against his stubborn father's wishes. Soon, the War Department sends the Stricklands an eviction notice—their land is commandeered to provide a test site for the atomic bomb. As the family's land and livelihood slip away, so do the bonds that hold them together. Jack is reported dead, when in fact he is a prisoner of war, suffering the tortures of the Bataan Death March. Ross is sent to jail as he engages in a hopeless fight to regain his past. Baylis loses his wife and embarks on a brief affair with Sara. The action alternates between the Philippines and New Mexico, as Jack and his family struggle to survive. The two stories merge upon Jack's return, when it becomes clear that the family has been irreparably damaged. Parson's painful portrayal of the war's hardships offers a fresh and searing take on the dark shadows cast by the atomic bomb. Agent, Kim Witherspoon. (May 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

The brutality of war exerted on its young soldiers and the shocks felt by the families left at home are brought to harrowing life in Parsons' new novel, set during World War II. It's 1941, and 17-year-old Jack Strickland is aching to enlist in the army and leave the monotony of the family ranch in New Mexico. Jack's father, Ross, is opposed to his son's desire to fight, especially for a government that is revoking leases on all federal lands in the area--including the Strickland ranch--for bomb-testing purposes. Ross and his brother, Baylis, have worked the ranch together their entire lives, and their impending displacement sends them both reeling. Their situation is exacerbated once Jack enlists and is sent to the Philippines, where he becomes a POW and endures the horrors of the Bataan death march. Parsons, by recounting struggles fought both at home and abroad, shows how indifferent war is to the people who make the most sacrifices, breaking families apart through fissures they didn't even know existed. A moving, richly textured novel rendered with a poet's touch. Jerry Eberle
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (June 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140007715X
• ISBN-13: 978-1400077151
• Product Dimensions: 16.5 x 12 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,248,116 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A haunting portrayal of harrowing times, April 28, 2005

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Shadows of the Sun (Hardcover)

Executive Order 9029. This one order from the Federal Government displaces ranching leaseholders from their land in New Mexico, establishing the government's wartime authority to establish a test site on the land. With a war going on, there is no one to gainsay the right of the government to use the land in a manner that will aid the war effort. For those who must move from the land it is a wrenching, irrevocable order.

The Strickland brothers are hard, proud men who have worked the land, making their living from it and raising generations of family and both Baylis and Ross fight against embitterment when their livelihood is taken away. Baylis's wife has long wanted to live in town, although her husband refuses to acknowledge her; Ross is the older, more stubborn of the two, still nursing a grudge after the accidental death of their father. Just before the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Ross' son Jack enlists, but he refuses to say goodbye or wish him well. Not knowing the fate of his son since Pearl Harbor, Ross is smothered under his rage and general sense of injustice, while Baylis tries to make peace with the future.

Meanwhile, Jack endures the agony of the Bataan Death March, living corpses plodding through an eternity of days to reach the end of their journey. As Jack's friends fall away by the roadside, the young soldier keeps moving, his youthful enthusiasm as a soldier pounded into painful monotony under the weight of unrelenting horrors. But Jack carries the blood of his family, determined to survive his ordeal.

This unsparing novel of the high mountain desert of New Mexico and the jungles of the Philippines is as plain-spoken as the rugged country that requires all a man has to survive. While a young man wills himself to live and return home, his journey is made more poignant by the desperate straits of the Strickland's left behind. It would appear that there is little love in this family, what there is damaged by illicit romance and bitter regret, pitting brother against brother. But the love in this novels runs far below the surface; it is the deep-rooted affection of generations nurtured on their own land, the essence and endurance of family.

In sparse prose reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, Parsons paints a compelling portrait of a harsh land and the men it breeds, their loyalties and resentments, those who are the heart of this country. With images as powerful as the harrowing dust-bowl years of the Great Depression, the author's characters stand alone, proud and immutable, citizens of a world they have built with their own hands. Bleak and plaintive, the novel resonates with its own spare beauty. In a country devastated by a world war, two brothers are stripped and bared, their personal demons exposed. A son struggles far from home, his parents beset with inexplicable grief over his fate. Then finally, the great leveler is released, the awesome glare of incomprehensible destruction as the world watches, illuminated by the transcendent glare of the atomic bomb. Luan Gaines/2005.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absorbing, June 6, 2005

By 

Amy Roach (Iowa) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Shadows of the Sun (Hardcover)

Poignant and poetic, In The Shadows of The Sun is as enjoyable as it is significant. A well-researched and beautiful character study full of description and metaphor. Timeless. I was torn between wanting to find out what happens next and wanting to savor every word.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read!, November 29, 2005

By 

Stuart Day (NC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Shadows of the Sun (Hardcover)

This is a rare gem: a page-turner that is beautifully crafted. It's the best book about the Southwest I've read.