Customer Reviews

The Twilight of Courage: A Novel

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Under duress, I recently confessed my favorite Thoene novel: Twilight of Courage. (It's like admitting you have a favorite child.) A friend of mine who has read only non-fiction books for the past 7 years agreed to read this one only because it is fiction based on fact. He loved it. (I, in turn, had to read a non-fiction book. He chose for me "Fate is the Hunter", a book so well-written I couldn't help reading it.)

I told my friend about the background to this book, which I know because I wrote a review in the Grand Rapids Press years ago: the Thoenes spent four months on a barge in Paris, with assistants, researching this work. They asked elderly Parisians this question: Where were you the day France fell? Seemed they all had a story. From those stories came this book. It's what got my friend to read it.

That's what I love about the Thoenes' work. Winston Churchill said something about hinges, that isn't interesting upon what small hinges events turn. The Thoenes seek out those hinges and give them a rightful place by recording them. Fact couched in fiction? Sometimes that's the only way a story can be told. That it is told at all is the only thing that matters. From Marcus Aurelius..."Look beneath the surface; let not the quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee..."

Mallowcups for Bodie and Brock. Cheers for their dedication to rusty old hinges.

Quite possibly the two greatest driving forces in the universe, Brock and Boede Thoene write a version of fiction so real, it makes me want to go down to the library and search for the characters names in the microfisched newspapers. I've been reading their work since I was twelve and I get more and more out of each book every time I read them. This book is a true portrait of struggle with subtle but deeply embedded overtones of faith. The Twilight of Courage is one of brightest stars in my library and a magnificent read.

An excellent book but we do need the sequel. I pray the writer will continue the story. Zion Covenant is one of the best series of books that I have ever read.

I thought The Twilight of Courage to be a very good book. Its main drawbacks are its length and occasional streched out sections. However, overall I found it to be intriguing and worth coming back to reread later on. I especially like that it is historically accurate and gives information on a few of the little known details of the war without being especially gruesome. It also fills in a little of the gap between the Zion Covenant and Zion Chronicles series concerning a few key characters in one or both of the series.

I thought Twilight of Courage was a great book. I like reading stories about World war 2, and I thought this story really captured the meaning of the war and the real life struggles. The one thing that it could use is a sequel. It leaves you hanging and wanting to know what will happen next. Other than that I thought it deserves a round of applause.

The Twilight of Courage Brock and Bodie Thoene, 1994

No one in Europe in the fall of 1939 could ignore the repercussions of the Nazi invasion of Poland. In Britain and the U. S. some still hoped for diplomatic solutions, but in France and Poland and Germany inexorable changes were impossible to deny. Josie Marlow, American newspaper reporter on assignment in Warsaw, is caught in the bombing of Warsaw. A young Jewish mother's in the Warsaw ghetto can only hope that her infant may somehow be carried away to safety. David Mayer, American flyer in the RAF, makes an unplanned tour of Normandy. Jérome and Marie, living an impoverished existence on a houseboat in the Seine in Paris, find their lives takes a turn for the worse. The American sisters, Mesdames Betsy and Rose, continue their miraculous orphan rescue operations in Paris in spite of the approaching battlefront and mobs of refuges. At the French Cavalry School near the Maginot Line, young men are determined to face the real enemy with their meager arms and brave horses. Captain Horst vonBockman, of the German army, struggles with his professional duties and his personal feelings. It is his wife, Katrina, who fears that his embattled conscience is in a "twilight" stage. Finally, Colonel André Chardon and the eccentric enigma-machine expert, Lewinski, are working against time and assassins in order to save the Allied troops being pushed towards Dunkirk. With great attention to historic detail the authors entwine these stories in an unsettling but realistic story set in 1939 and 1940. This book should be required reading for high school world history students or for students of French or German. There is nothing sugar-coated about the events or dialogue, but at the same time, there is an obviously high moral tone to the writing. (There are some errors in the French which surely will be corrected in another edition.) This novel is both "enlightening" and spiritually challenging.

The Thoenes are among my favorite authors, but this is not one of my favorites. There were lots of characters, which is fine, but it took a long time for the story to get going. The book is advertised as a stand alone novel, but there it seems to me that there is no ending. The lives of most of the characters are left dangling--including those who are in previous books. Maybe I am missing something, but I was disappointed.

This is a long book, but every page is worth it. It is an outstanding, well thought out, entralling story. I could barely put it down. The characters are very realistic, the message is clear without being pointed. It captures emotions and feelings almost perfectly. However, it does feel like there is a great deal left to be told and explained. Any plans for a sequel?

The book was an excellent book to read, but it really does need a sequel to wrap up the Chronicles. The sequel also needs to cover the rest of the war. This way the reader will be prepared to jump into the Covenants and will not have to do a lot of filling in. For example, how did David fall in love with Annie in the Twilight and then fall in love with Ellie in the Zion Covenants.

I have read most of the Thoene's books, and this one is as good as the others! The Thoene's books are researched extensively, and I have learned more from this book (and their Zion Covenants and Zion Chronicles ) than I learned in any history class. This book is a real eye opener!