A Pledge Of Silence -- by Flora J. Solomon

 

It really was one of the best I've read in quite a while, and I hope this isn't all from Author Flora J. Solomon, but I can see that she might still be trying to recharge after this historical fiction/action/romance/tearjerker. 

This came out in 2015, and she did write a somewhat similar book, but the really best efforts don't often leave us with much else. Unless something new and envigorating comes along. We have to hope so.

Her grip on the continuity, content, and empathy with the reader, and those who knew that time intimately was so strong. It really was hard to put down.

WWII U.S. Army nurse Marge Bauer from Michigan joined the service just in time to be in the thick of it when Japan invaded the Philippines. That also left her in the Manila-based Santo Tomas University prison camp with still plenty of death at her feet, but not expiring at a battlefield rate as it was earlier on Corregidor.

She was a young, single woman at the time, losing lovers where she was, and eventually her original love back home in Michigan.

Marge was one of so many from that event and time who survived physically, but not completely mentally. War kills in so many ways.

Marge eventually had a family, but she became one of those killers to achieve her marital status. The end plays out beautifully in her twilight time at home in the 1990s. 

If you also intimately knew survivors of that war who told us what they could, despite the pain, it could haunt you, too.