Prisoners of War (Hardcover)

by Steve Yarbrough (Author)
Key Phrases: rolling store, drink box, rec area, Miss Edna, Frank Holder, John Burns (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Set in the same small Mississippi town as Yarbrough's critically acclaimed Visible Spirits, this complex WWII-era novel explores questions of morality and social inequity in the rural South when a group of German POWs are quartered at a local camp and sent to work as day laborers on nearby farms. The novel opens with the uncomfortable friendship between young Dan Timms, who drives one of his enterprising Uncle Alvin's "rolling stores" (old school buses boasting all the necessities of country life: sodas, coal-oil lamps, radios), and L.C. Stevens, the black employee who drives the other. While L.C. vainly struggles to make his work partner see the "parallel universe" in which black Americans are trapped, Dan yearns to join the army and escape the fresh memory of his father's recent suicide and his suspicions about his mother's past. But Dan's friend Marty Stark shows him another side of war when he returns damaged and changed from the German theater and is reassigned to help guard the town's German POWs. The story shifts subtly when a Polish prisoner informs Dan of an escape planned by several other prisoners, setting in motion a chain of events that eventually brings Marty's troubled war memories to the surface. Meanwhile, L.C. suffers a beating by an older, powerful white man who, after losing his own son in the war, uses his influence to ensure that the young black man is drafted. The multiple subplots slow the novel's pace, but Yarbrough's warm, measured voice, clean prose and rich character studies make this an unusually tender and accomplished study of the reverberations of war on the home front.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Once again, Yarbrough (Visible Spirits, 2001) turns in a gripping, character-driven novel that tackles important issues of race relations, patriotism, and the effects of war. The story takes place in a rural Mississippi community in 1943. Dan Timms is a few weeks shy of enlisting in the military, and he can hardly wait to shake the small-town dust off his shoes. For him the war is a reason to escape the knowledge of his mother's infidelity and the discovery of his father's suicide. Not even the experiences of his best friend, who has returned from the war with a damaged psyche, can dissuade him. Nor can his war-profiteering uncle, for whom Dan works part-time. Also working for Alvin Timms is L. C., a young African American who has no intention of serving in the military and for whom the racial gap is wider than the Grand Canyon. The novel is far from weak on plot, but Yarbrough's characters are so powerfully three-dimensional that the story's tension flows from many directions. And it never lets up. Frank Caso
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (January 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375414789
• ISBN-13: 978-0375414787
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,383,300 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captors are "Prisoners of War" in sobering, cautionary novel, October 13, 2005

By	Bruce J. Wasser (Lake Bluff, IL) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Prisoners of War (Paperback)

The wreckage of armed conflict litters the landscape of fictional Loring, Mississippi, in Steve Yarbrough's courageous and cautionary, "Prisoners of War." The novel's title is an apt one, and German POW's are not the only people held captive by the ravages of war. Dan Timms, not quite eighteen and chomping at the bit for his own involvement in World War II, possesses an innocence which shields him not only from the pernicious impact the previous world war had on the town but also inhibits his understanding of the subtle, but pervasive corruption, rampant in his community. Timms' struggle for emotional independence stands in bleak contrast to the ubiquitous pessimism and despair elsewhere.

Yarbrough presents several provocative theses about human behavior in "Prisoners," the most interesting of which posits that people have long outlived the moment of their deaths. Many of Yarbrough's characters are examples of the "living dead," wounded souls going through the motions of life until a climactic moment extinguishes them forever. The belligerent racist, Frank Holder, exemplifies this quality. Angry, bewildered and resentful over his enlisted son's untimely death, Holder's need for vengeance against a nameless, unconquerable force, extinguishes whatever limited capabilities he had to function as a decent man.

Dan's father and uncle fall victim to the same disability, but present different symptoms. World War I devoured Jimmy Del Timms, Dan's father. Cynical, uncommunicative and numbed, Dan's father stumbles through post-traumatic stress and suffers a disintegrating family. Jimmy Del's brother, Alvin, has betrayed conscience and community with his actions; aware of his own decadence, Alvin shrugs his shoulders at his own stench and revels in his role as a war profiteer.

Yarbrough presents the debasement of personality in times of extreme stress as a corollary to his central thesis. Even the German POW's, whose presence as seemingly tractable field laborers mollifies the struggling cotton farmers of the area, display a corrosion of the spirit. They secretively and ineptly plan an escape and turn on one of their own when the plot is foiled. Dan's mother, Shirley, is a ruin as a consequence of her failed marriage and her own moral short-circuiting. His longstanding friend, Marty Stark, has returned from the front torn asunder by moral doubt and loss of ethical standards.

Despite the abundance of evil and indifference in "Prisoners of War," our capacities to endure and be good appear. L. C., Dan's African-American friend, suffers through a horrific beating, forgiving the perpetrator, understanding his "blues." But these illuminating moments of goodness are few and far between. Steve Yarbrough intent is to tear away the veneer of civilization that covers us and to show the true grain of our personality. His novel is a towering success, elegantly crafted, precisely detailed and psychologically valid.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Prisoners of War, July 30, 2004

By	L. Hobson (Palmdale California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Changes made through the eyes of both white and black doing the war in a small Mississippi town. German prisoners are brought to a small Mississippi town and the events that take place also open some of the eyes in town about black and white. Dan Timms a white man with the same job as L.C. Stevens a black man driving a converted bus that sells a little of this and that, a small store on the move. Dan Yearns also comes into the picture when he joins the army to run away from the memories of his fathers suicide. The book has many small town people and how their lives seem to be changing with the war and in their own home town. A very well written book on the feelings of the south and how events can change thinking along with actions. Larry Hobson -Author- The Day Of The Rose

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A gutsy tale!, March 29, 2004

By	M. T. Guzman "squeakychu" (Rockville, MD, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The year is 1943. Dan, a young man living in Mississipi, is eager to leave home and join the Army. His dad is dead, and the bank took over his family's farm. Dan, along with his "colored" colleague L.C., work for Dan's uncle Alvin by driving two old school buses that were converted into rolling snack stands. Marty, a friend of Dan's from the same town is stationed there as a guard for a camp of German POW's.

This is not an easy book to read. Besides having to keep the characters straight, it involves getting into the psyches of guys struggling with questions of racial inequality, considering the necessity or opposition to being in the armed service, and being so close to German prisoners of war. The story of these three young men comes alive with friendship as well as conflict as they struggle individually. Nothing comes easy for any of these three men. Their story brings the reader with a heavy hand into the heart and mentality of a small Southern town in some very difficult times.