Rumors of Peace: A Novel
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
To ten-year-old Suse Hansen, the fighting in Europe seems far away from the blue skies and quiet streets of her Bay Area home in Mendoza, California—despite newspaper war photographs and the tense radio broadcasts. But Pearl Harbor changes everything. Caught up in the fear and uncertainty of air raid drills, draft calls, and the mysterious departure of her Japanese and Italian neighbors, Suse becomes obsessed with the war.
As Mendoza and the rest of America adjust to their new lives, Suse, too, will face challenges of her own as she begins to navigate the uncharted terrain of adolescence. Over the next four years she will confront the complexities of life—the demands of school, evolving friendships, brothers and sisters leaving home, the disturbing thrill of sexual awakening—while trying to understand who she is and what the future may hold for a world consumed by the horror of war.
A rediscovered classic, Rumors of Peace is an extraordinary coming-of-age story chronicling the loss of American innocence through the voice of one remarkable young girl.
Related to Rumors of Peace
Related ebooks
The Inverted Forest: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Revivalists: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Storykeeper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Conviction of Cora Burns Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Aila's Journal: A Tale of Southern Reconstruction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Palm Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Magic Hour Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lieutenant: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shoes for Anthony: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Once On a Time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Shelter of Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Takeaway Men: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn at the Kill Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Woman Made of Snow Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5One Day You'll Burn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road to Urbino Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Short Time to Stay Here Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Feather Crowns: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Goodbye to Ribbons: Based on a true story, a powerful and thought-provoking novel, set deep in rural Britain after the close of WWII Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSing to Me, Papa Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKnit, Purl, Slip Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Porcelain Moon: A Novel of France, the Great War, and Forbidden Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Paper Son Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThat Bright Land Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Year on Fire Mountain Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Pass Guard at Ypres: A Novel Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Trouble with the Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ordinary Grace: by William Kent Krueger | Conversation Starters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Woman with Two Shadows: A Novel of WWII Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blue Ridge Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
World War II Fiction For You
The Tattooist of Auschwitz: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Secret Book of Flora Lea: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Storyteller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Woman in the Room: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Lost Names Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Huntress: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rose Code: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Winemaker's Wife Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Forest of Vanishing Stars: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diamond Eye: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Scorched Men Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Last Kingdom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paris Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mash: A Novel About Three Army Doctors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paris Library: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost English Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girl They Left Behind: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Forgotten Home Child Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Queen of the Tearling: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Postcard Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Son Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Jane Austen Society: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In the First Circle: The First Uncensored Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Three Sisters: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition, With a New Introduction by the Author Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The German Girl: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Yellow Bird Sings: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Last Jew in Prague Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Guardian of Lies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Auschwitz Lullaby: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Rumors of Peace
17 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I got to chapter 15 and had to stop. I love books about this era and I enjoyed this book until Suse met Peggy and her sister Helen Maria. It turned strange and uninteresting for me.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Every once in a while, we can be pleasantly surprised – no, more than ‘pleasantly surprised’; we can be downright astonished!
I picked up a copy of Ella Leffland’s Rumors of Peace on a stoop here in Brooklyn one afternoon last summer, read “coming-of-age story” on the back cover, and thought it might make for a good little read for my daughter. This summer, I decided to first read it myself so as not to waste my daughter’s time if the book turned out to be some silly kind of YA Fiction.
A waste of time? Nothing could be further from the truth! If the name of Ella Leffland wasn’t already as well-known to me as that of Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor or Joyce Carol Oates, I consider that to be my failing.
Ms. Leffland’s prose is immaculate – and her character, Helen Maria (not the protagonist, Suze, but rather the protagonist’s older sister), has to rank right up there alongside Uriah Heep, Frankie Addams, Atticus Finch, Captain Ahab, and Don Quixote for being (to me at least) among the most colorful and memorable in literature.
At the same time, I found Ms. Leffland’s use of headlines (about the progress of WWII) as a literary device to be every bit as effective as John Dos Passos’s use of Newsreels in his U. S. A. Trilogy.
If I’ve always considered Carson McCullers’s Member of the Wedding to be the most accomplished coming-of-age story in American literature – and on a par with Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield and Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones in British literature – I now have to say that Ella Leffland’s Rumors of Peace figures right alongside it. Yes, it’s that good!
One of the more impressive aspects of Rumors of Peace is Ms. Leffland’s ability to show, in both thought and action, Suze’s growth – and to illustrate that growth in perfect syncopation with world events right up to and including the dropping of the A-Bomb on Hiroshima. While I realize that this is the objective of any coming-of-age story worth its salt – or at least its ink – I can’t recall ever having seen it done so effectively.
In any case, I have to wonder in this, the year 2014 (and beyond): will anyone still possess comparable powers of observation for things both near and far? In this, the year 2014 (and beyond), with most people – whether on foot or in some other mode of transportation – plugged in digitally, will anyone still be able to observe and describe the world beyond his or her own digital navel?
Somehow, I doubt it.
RRB
07/28/14
Brooklyn, NY