Radar Girls

Radar Girls by Sara Ackerman 368 pages

Daisy Wilder lives on the Hawaiian island of O’ahu (the spelling the author uses and is correct). She lives in an oceanfront shack with her mother, who is suffering a deep, deep depression. Daisy works on a nearby ranch to support them, and she loves working with the horses. Other than the people she works with, she has no other social life.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, Daisy has “borrowed” one of the ranch’s finest stallions, Moon, for a run on the beach. He is coal black with a gently fierce heart. As the Japanese planes roar overheard, headed to Pearl Harbor, Moon bolts and runs away.

Terrified for the animal, Daisy looks for him, but to no avail. She needs to get back to the shack to be with her mother. Her mother is oblivious, but Daisy is terrified. Will there be a land invasion? There have been rumors. What about Moon? What will the Japanese do to him if they find? What about her mom?

As the day progresses, Daisy’s anxieties dim, but never go away (and they will stay with her for the next four years). She tries, in vain, to find Moon. There is talk of relocating all civilians to the Mainland. She knows she has to get her mother to California to be with a relative, but Daisy plans on staying on the island.

After searching for Moon, who seems to have just disappeared, Daisy must tell the ranch’s owner what has happened. Hal Montgomery is beside himself, accusing Daisy of stealing and fires her. She is devastated.

Mr. Montgomery’s son, Walker, comes home before the bombs fall to heal from a severe concussion.. He is a navy pilot, but now it’s all hands on desk.  He is stationed aboard the USS Enterprise. And we all know what happens when boy meets girl.

Wanting to do her part for the war effort, and since she is out of a job, Daisy signs up for the Women’s Air Raid Defense. The military is looking for twenty intelligent women to help provide air defense for Hawaii. Daisy passes all the tests and is made part of the team. There she finds something she has never had before, female friendship. She must learn to navigate these are much as she learns to navigate the radar system.

Throughout the entire war, Daisy never loses hope of finding Moon and is always on the lookout.

The details about those early days in radar were fascinating and author Ackerman does a wonderful job balancing too much information and teaching me something new.

Thanks to Ackerman’s vivid descriptions of the Hawaiian Islands, the ocean, the fish, the salty air, reading “Radar Girls” is like taking a beach vacation without getting sand in your underwear. It’s also a boy-meets-girl-loses-boy-gets-girl story set against the beauty of Hawaii and the fears and the uncertainties of World War II. Therefore, “Radar Girls” receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

Circling the Sun

Circling the Sun by Paula McLain   368 pages

If you, like me, loved Paula McClain’s novel, The Paris Wife, I’ll bet good money that you are going to enjoy her new novel as much.

The timeframe is still the 1920s, but instead of the United States and France, McLain’s new story takes to the wilds of Africa, when it was still a remote and uncivilized country. Kenya wasn’t Kenya yet; the majority of countries as we know them today didn’t exist either.

McLain also follows suit in that she has picked a real women to portray, Beryl Markham. I didn’t know much about Markham other than she was a renowned aviator. Because of that, I must also say that, as I was reading, I often thought of Anne Morrow Lindbergh as depicted in Melanie Benjamin’s wonderful novel, The Aviator’s Wife.

The story begins in 1934 as Markham is beginning her solo trip across the Atlantic from England to America. No one, not man nor woman, had ever managed this daring feat. After leaving readers with their hearts in their stomachs, the story starts where all stories start—at the beginning, when Charles “Clutt” and Clara Clutterbacck relocate their family from England to a farm in Njoro in the British East Africa Protectorate. From there, we watch young Beryl grow into a trailblazing horse trainer.

There were lots of names of town and native tribe language that I didn’t know how to pronounce, but it didn’t get in the way of the story. The writing and plot are solid, the story intriguing and enchanting, and the characters, both fictional and real, are captivating.

I give Circling the Sun 6 out of 5 stars.