"Sunday, December 7, 1941, is peaceful and sunny. We're lunching at the kitchen table in our employee's cottage on a ranch high in California's Coast Range, enjoying a broadcast by the New York Philharmonic on our Zenith portable radio, when the familiar voice of John Daly breaks in. "We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor." Americans strafed, wounded, dead - we feel as if the floor is being pulled out from under us. Leaving us at the edge of an abyss..." Thus World War 2 enters the young lives of writer and ranch hand Robert Easton and his wife, Jane. Bob, like millions of others, goes to war; like millions of women, Jane stays behind. Through letters from home and war front, these two victims of worldwide upheaval create an intimate and suspenseful dialogue - Jane, not knowing whether the husband she's writing to is alive or dead, endures wartime childbirth, the battlefield death of a beloved father, and the responsibilities of a single parent raising two small children - while finding time for volunteer Red Cross work at an army hospital.
Bob, approaching Berlin with the combat infantry, wonders if he will survive to see his wife and daughters. In the process they gain a new understanding of the human experience and their place in it. Into the broad sweep of "Love and War" come FDR, Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini, "Uncle Joe", Stalin, Eisenhower, Generals Marshall and Patton, Ingrid Bergmen, Betty Grable, Churchill, Aldous Huxley, a nameless heroine of the French resistance, black volunteers, and many other GIs. We experience the "Great Air Raid on Los Angeles" and D-Day in New York City, meet the advancing Russians at the Elbe River, prepare for the invasion of Japan, and share the joys of V-E Day and V-J Day with their visions of a better world. The authors' comments and numerous photographs enhance the narrative and provide historical background. This is a book about ordinary and extraordinary people, two lovers and mates who discover a new maturity, and events that shaped all our lives. An account not of one war only but of all wars, "Love and War" speaks to those who must go and those who must stay behind.
- ISBN10 0806123362
- ISBN13 9780806123363
- Publish Date 1 June 1991
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 2 June 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Oklahoma Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 398
- Language English