The Far Reaches

By: Homer Hickam

Narrated by: Mark Deakins

The year is 1943 and World War II in the Pacific rages on, with Americans engaged in desperate battles against a cunning enemy. Coast Guard Captain Josh Thurlow is on hand at the invasion of Tarawa, as the U.S. Navy begins the grand strategy of throwing her marines at island after bloody island across the Pacific.

As blood colors the waters around Tarawa, Josh flounders ashore through a floating graveyard of dead men and joins the survivors, determined to somehow wrest victory from disaster. Critically wounded, Josh expects to die. Instead, Sister Mary Kathleen, a young Irish nun, nurses him back to health, and then shanghais Josh, sidekick Bosun Ready O’Neal, and three American marines to a group of beautiful tropical islands invaded by a brutal Japanese warlord. Josh and his little band must decide whether to help the Sister fight the battle she demands, return to Tarawa and the “real” war, or settle down in the romantic splendor of the South Seas.

Hickam expertly weaves the adventures of these hot-blooded characters tighter and tighter until the Sister’s secrets and sins are finally revealed during a horrific battle in the lair of the warlord. With an incredible eye for historical detail and the talent of a master storyteller, Homer Hickam delivers another tour de force.©2007 Homer Hickam; (P)2007 Books on Tape

Enlightening, Sobering & Engaging

There is so much about the WWII fighting in the South Pacific I never knew about and much less understood. I have watched movies, read other books and several times been to the Nimitz museum in Fredericksburg, TX and have struggled to get my mind around all the moving parts of WWII. This book, did not attempt to educate with dates and battle history. It zeroes in on the lives and minds of a group of people not likely to found in museums or Hollywood. By living along side these people for the duration of this book, my mind was exposed to many new angles. May no one ever romanticize being a soldier.

The most sobering message in this book that broke my heart is that evil will not ever be satiated, but requires good people to be willing to kill evil people to stop evil. What I would add is that without standards of good and evil higher than human opinion, everyone does what is right in their own eyes. Who can differentiate between good and evil? The book makes many references to the nun's irredeemable secret sin. The first human sin was choosing for oneself to define good and evil, as though we could be wise enough to know, good enough to choose the right and powerful enough to follow through. That is the prerogative of only an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good transcendent being.

Homer Hickam has once again written a book so engaging that I was sorry it when it ended.

A great follow on to the series

A very entertaining and historically base series of great stories that also show the gaps between cultures in the midst of WW II.