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In the Shadows of the Sun

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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.

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.

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

This novel is a must read for Americans during this time of the Iraq war. Parsons illuminates a facet of WWII, the so-called "good" war, that reveals just how devastating it really was, both for the losers and the "winners." We see how a humble New Mexican ranching family, patriotic to the core, is betrayed by our government, which takes their land and then their son. The lessons are haunting when applied to our age, and this new war. Read this novel, and you will not only better understand our country's history, but our present as well.