Cindy Vallar's Blog - Posts Tagged "fiction"

Evening Gray Morning Red by Rick Spilman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Being the only man aboard who knows how to navigate, Thomas Larkin is voted by the crew to take them to Massachusetts after the captain dies at sea. It is a lonesome and frightening experience, but also a challenging one for a sixteen year old who began the journey as an able seaman. With the help of John Stevens, the bosun and a former privateer nearly twice his age, Thom gets them safely home. They are greeted by an undercurrent of dissatisfaction mixed with anger, for the Crown expects the colonies to pay for debts England accrued during the war. The presence of the British warship anchored in the harbor merely aggravates the tense situation in 1768.

While Thom and Johnny celebrate their homecoming, as well as new jobs on a forthcoming cruise, a press gang invades the tavern. Johnny escapes, but Thom is swept up and taken aboard HMS Romney. Feeling honor bound to save his young friend and knowing he can’t do so ashore, Johnny volunteers to join the Royal Navy. After taking the king’s shilling, he realizes escaping the ship is nigh impossible. To complicate the situation, Thom seethes with anger at being denied his freedom and Lieutenant William Dudingston is an arrogant man who hates colonials.

Patience and observation provide an opportunity to escape, but the arrival of a fleet of British warships intervenes and instead of getting away, the Romney weighs anchor and heads south for the Caribbean. Five arduous months fraught with challenges and dangers, both on deck and at sea, finally present a new chance to desert during a brewing tempest. Yet freedom fails to lift the haunting weight Thom has carried with him during the voyage. Sooner or later he will once again encounter his nemesis, Dudingston, of this he has no doubt.

Gripping nautical and historical fiction at its best, Evening Gray Morning Red is really two different books that span four years. The first half focuses on the pressing and escape, while the second presents a tantalizing depiction of the historical confrontation between the packet boat Hannah and the Royal Navy Schooner Gaspee off Namquid Point, Rhode Island – an event that united the colonies and was a precursor to the American Revolution. Spilman deftly brings the period, people, and situation to life in a way that a history can never achieve. While there are occasional misspellings, missing words, or too many words, none of these diminish the excitement, anger, or fomenting rebellion that marked the actual event. From first page to last, he whisks readers back in time to stand beside Thom and Johnny and experience all the emotions and intrigue they do. When the back cover closes, it’s like leaving good friends. You miss being with them, but the voyage was more exciting and fulfilling than you ever imagined. Highly recommended.




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The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower: A Biography of C.S. Forester's Famous Naval Hero by C. Northcote Parkinson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


When writers create stories and populate them with characters, it’s necessary to also flesh out details about who these people are and why they are as they appear in the books. This allows the authors to craft believable characters and readers to see them as “real” people. One such character who has stood the test of time is C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower, whose life unfolded over thirty years in twelve books. Forester pieced together Hornblower’s life from documentary evidence that the admiral’s descendant donated to the Royal Navy College, Greenwich in 1927.

In 1970, Parkinson discovered that three boxes of new material about Viscount Horatio Hornblower had come to light. The admiral had refused to permit these papers to be seen by others until 100 years after his death. The problem came in tracking down these containers since the companies to which they were originally entrusted had undergone change during that time lapse. What Parkinson eventually found were details that filled in gaps left by Forester’s accounts of Hornblower’s life. So much was new that Parkinson decided to write a biography about this legendary character.

A biography is defined as the history of a person’s life, and that person is someone who actually lived. For all intents and purposes, this book is an actual biography complete with appendices, correspondence, illustrations, a family tree, diagrams, and maps. It is also indexed and one illustration is of a title page of a book that Hornblower owned and signed. The twelve chapters chronicle his life from Schoolboy to Midshipman to Lieutenant all the way through his achieving Admiral of the Fleet. Much of the book focuses on his naval career, but there are also personal moments, such as his marriage to his landlady’s daughter, his children, and the loves of his life, one of whom was related to Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.

This book is a compelling read and a must for those who have enjoyed the Hornblower novels, or those unfamiliar with the first edition published in 1970, and those who know Horatio Hornblower only through the movies that illustrate his early exploits. You will not be disappointed and you will most likely learn new details about this fascinating, though fictional, admiral.


(This review first appeared at Pirates and Privateers: http://www.cindyvallar.com/Parkinson....)



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