After hearing so much positive about Jeff Shaara’s historical novels, it seemed time to actually experience one. For some reason, I was under the impression that they were all about the American Civil War, so I was delighted to find this novel about the United States’ early involvement in WWII throughout the African and Italian campaigns. Having actually met veterans who served in the Italian campaign, this seemed the book with which to start.

The good news for me was the depth of obvious research. I love the way Shaara invested a significant amount of time in reading the memoirs of the principal characters and assimilating the facts of the various campaigns. The bad news was that I didn’t really think of The Rising Tide as a historical novel so much as embellished history where he occasionally imagined conversations or thoughts of which no one can be certain. My expectation in a historical novel is that the author uses some non-historical character to illuminate the real events of history while recounting events that might have happened parallel to that history. The Sharpe novels, Horatio Hornblower saga, Bolitho novels, and Rifleman Dodd stories are more what I expect in historical fiction. Shaara’s effort seems like a hybrid between an actual history book and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. The actual events are paced like a novel, but our relationships to the point-of-view characters don’t seem as intimate. That is, of course, strictly my opinion. Judging from the almost universal raves toward Shaara’s novels, I’m a minority—perhaps a minority of one.

For me, there were only a few places in the book where the characters caught anything like fire. One of those places was whenever Rommel was trying to figure out what to tell his wife; another example would be when Ike reacted to Patton’s slapping incident or was removing Fredendall from command in Africa; and the other two places were when the battles were told from the tanker’s (Logan’s) perspective or the paratrooper’s (Adams’) point of view. On those brief occasions, one felt the heat of freshly fired weapons and the panic of incoming fire. At other times, the book felt like a witness’s deposition as opposed to a cross-examination.

Still, the novel serves a purpose. As with a good history book, it pulls together jewels from a myriad of sources and strings them into a stunning necklace of events. While I personally could have dealt with more characterization, the summaries of battle plans and battle experiences were equal to some of the most absorbing memoirs I’ve read from the era. And the entire book rings true for me since I’ve talked to veterans of one of those campaigns who had very little positive to say about one of their commanding officers while being effusive in their praise of another. And these enlisted men and non-commissioned officers didn’t always agree with the history books on which commander was more effective. “He nearly got me killed twice!” was what one veteran said of General Clark, while that same veteran glowed visibly when speaking about serving with Patton.

I’m glad I read this book and I intend to read more. Nonetheless, I have to confess that I still like a bit more imaginative character building in historical novels that I like the best. I suppose Shaara was attempting to write the type of non-fiction novel that Capote did. If so, I wish it had a little more of the passion shown by the latter. At times, I felt left in objectivity when I desperately wanted to feel subjective about the events.