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Beneath A Peaceful Moon by Debby Lee - Mary Wishram, a Yakima tribe member, and John Painted Horse, a Navajo tribe member, meet while serving at Camp Pendleton during WWII. Mary's only remaining family member, her brother, is in a POW camp in the Philippines and she wants to do whatever she can to find out if he's safe and bring him home. As her friendship with John develops, she volunteers for additional training so she can use her language skills as a spy.
John has a lot of mixed feelings about his service in the Marines. He loves his country and wants to serve, but he is worried about his mother and young siblings and how they will be provided for if something happens to him. He wrestles with the decision to join the Code Talker program but eventually agrees and is deployed to the South Pacific as the conflict there intensifies.
The extremely short notice and secrecy of their deployments means that Mary and John have no way of staying in touch while they are serving, and their faith and courage are tested as they face danger and each worries for the other's safety. Mary looks for opportunities to gather information about her brother, and risks discovery in order to help the men in the POW camp, but she must not jeapordize her mission or the lives of those she's trying to help. Will she and John escape the peril they find themselves in, and will they be able to find each other once they return home?
This was a great story in terms of exploring the service of native Americans during WWII, especially the roles women were able to take on. Mary and John are both likeable and sympathetic characters, and as I read of course I was cheering for them to make the right decisions and accomplish their missions safely so they could find their loved ones and each other and continue on to their happily ever after. However, if you're looking for insight into the Code Talkers program, there's not a lot of that, and there's almost nothing about what kind of training Mary receives to be a spy. I actually felt like the story just needed the characters to be in those programs in order to get them to the setting, but was not about the programs or training at all. The story as a whole relies quite heavily on somewhat improbable coincidences, at least in my opinion. That John and Mary are both assigned to the same region in the South Pacific and on short notice is believable, but the "near misses" where they don't quite find each other despite being in very close proximity started to stretch belief, and (Possible Spoiler Alert!) when they both go missing and are presumed dead in separate incidents that involved improbable and daring escapes from peril, I thought it was a bit much. Especially when it happens twice to John. In places I thought the writing was a bit choppy and I wasn't sure whether it was intentional or not.
Overall, a very good story that invites some thought about how the native Americans that served patriotically during this time were treated, and the ambivalence many must have felt at putting their lives on the line for a country that had marginalized them. Enjoy the story with its light romance, heroic characters, and real dilemmas, but be prepared to suspend disbelief during some of the action.
Mary's Language Skills Could Help End the War in the Pacific
Full of intrigue, adventure, and romance, this series celebrates the unsung heroes―the heroines of WWII.
Mary Wishram, an orphaned Yakima tribal member, aches for her brother who suffers in a POW camp in the Philippine Islands and her Japanese friends who languish in a relocation center. Determined to end the war by any means necessary, she employs her language skills to become a spy. Leaving Camp Pendleton for the South Pacific, she faces escalating threats of peril to help bring her loved ones home.
John Painted Horse, a proud Navajo, struggles with the loss of his father who died in WWI for a country that didn't consider him a United States citizen. Though his home state didn't offer him the right to vote, he joins the Code Talker program at Camp Pendleton. Thrust into mounting danger in the South Pacific, he hopes to bring long overdue recognition and honor to his people, no matter the cost.
Will these two wounded souls find healing from their past traumas and a deeper relationship with God, before it's too late? Or will they lose their chance at love, and everything they hold dear?
Visit Barbour Publishing for more info on where to buy.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Barbour Publishing through NetGalley and was under no obligation to post a review.
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This is a book set at the beach for the Summer Reading Challenge.
This is a book in which chapters have cliffhangers (#36) for The 52 Book Club's 2023 Reading Challenge
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by Kim Vogel Sawyer - It seems a long time ago that I read this, but I remember it. It's a prairie summer cover, and I chose this one from among a whole lot that I've read with a similar image on the cover because it Summer is the lead character's name and is in the title.
by Lisa T. Bergren - One of the closest to a beach cover I noticed in my archives, although I'm sure there are more.
by Naomi Stephens - Another very British and summery image, and it's a historical setting like a majority of my reads.