Hold Strong

A Novel

By: Robert Dugoni, Jeff Langholz, Chris Crabtree

Narrated by: Will Damron

From Robert Dugoni, Jeff Langholz, and Chris Crabtree comes an epic and inspiring novel—based on true events—about love, heroism, and resilience during the darkest chapters of World War II.

Sam Carlson is a projectionist in small-town Minnesota, where fantasies unspool in glorious black and white—for him and for his sweetheart, college-bound math whiz Sarah Haber. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Sam is sent to the Philippines and captured as a POW. Brutalized but unbroken by the Bataan Death March and POW camps, Sam is one of eighteen hundred starved and weakened prisoners herded into the cargo hold of a barbaric hell ship called the Arisan Maru, his survival doubtful.

Determined to use her math skills on the home front, Sarah is recruited to Washington, DC, into the covert field of code breaking. When Sarah intercepts a message about a Japanese convoy, the US Navy’s mission is clear: sink the Arisan Maru and send it to the bottom of the South China Sea. Now, the lives of the two young lovers are about to inadvertently collide in one of the most shocking acts of World War II.

Anchored in an extraordinary true story and breathlessly re-created, Hold Strong is a one-of-a-kind novel that explores faith, courage, survival, and coming home against insurmountable odds.

© 2025 by La Mesa Fiction, LLC, Jeff A. Langholz, and Chris Adam Crabtree. ℗ 2024 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“This book is hard to put down.” —Historical Novels Review

“Though these gruesome aspects of war aren’t often easy to portray in novels and historical fiction, Hold Strong, by the trio of researchers and writers Robert Dugoni, Jeff Langholz, and Chris Crabtree, has achieved the unachievable. It does so with their cast of strong characters backed by their meticulous research.” —The Epoch Times

“Something straight out of a Tom Clancy novel, with submarines and secret codes and war-altering decisions made at heavy cost. It’s thrilling stuff, made all the more so by its grounding in history.” —Rob Merrill, Associated Press

Too Real

A very difficult listen due to the subject
None of us can begin to imagine what people in war go through. This book brought me as near as I want to be.

He’s done it again!

Fantastic. Eye opening. Perfectly laid out story. Dugoni has risen to my top author. A must read for all Americans. I will never forget.

Extraordinary

I have read all of Robert Dugoni’s books, and they have all been very well written and engaging. This one, however, is in a different class and is extraordinary. I’ve read other WWII books with compelling stories and heroic characters., and this historic fiction rates at the top, combining Dugoni’s writing skills and a little known aspect of WWII.

Wow, what a book!

An eye opening gut-punch of a book about the "Battling Bastars of Banaan." I'd read nonfiction books on the topic, but Dugoni brought it home.

Enlightening and Disturbing

This historical fiction was very moving. I was not aware of what happened during World War II and the ramifications that it had on our troops especially the POW‘s. The author has done a fantastic job covering historical facts. The use of characters that represented people in the book. It was heartbreaking. Very educational don’t miss it!