Adult Fiction--Dew to Dunning

Dew, Robb Forman.  The Truth of the Matter (Little, Brown, 2005).

"As World War II sweeps the children of the prominent Schofield family of Washburn, Ohio, into adulthood, their mother, Agnes, discovers that she is a tourist in her own life. Widowed years before by her husband Warren's mysterious death in an icy morning car crash, Agnes no longer knows how to define herself. She is a wife with no husband, and a mother whose children no longer need her." "But the war is ending, and the dispersed members of the clan make their way home: the beautiful Betts, the long-inseparable Dwight and Claytor, and Agnes's youngest child, Howard. Now grown up, they have all returned full of their own lives. Agnes's unspoken feelings of devotion as well as resentment - toward her children, toward her dead husband - create a palpable tension as she struggles to find the truth among the competing histories." Accustoming herself once more to her children's presence proves to be a less easy task than Agnes anticipated. In an era when few women exercise their autonomy, Agnes herself and her children and the friends who have known her all her life are startled to realize that she has become a woman of determined, perhaps selfish, independence. Even in her secret affair with Will Dameron, a man she might once have loved, Agnes discovers it is her self-reliance that she values most.

Diamant, Anita. Day After Night (Scribner, 2010).

Just as she gave voice to the silent women of the Hebrew Bible in The Red Tent, Anita Diamant creates a cast of breathtakingly vivid characters—young women who escaped to Israel from Nazi Europe—in this intensely dramatic novel.

Day After Night is based on the extraordinary true story of the October 1945 rescue of more than two hundred prisoners from the Atlit internment camp, a prison for “illegal” immigrants run by the British military near the Mediterranean coast south of Haifa. The story is told through the eyes of four young women at the camp who survived the Holocaust: Shayndel, a Polish Zionist; Leonie, a Parisian beauty; Tedi, a hidden Dutch Jew; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor. Haunted by unspeakable memories and losses, afraid to hope, the four of them find salvation in the bonds of friendship and shared experience even as they confront the challenge of re-creating themselves in a strange new country. Diamant’s triumphant novel is an unforgettable story of tragedy and redemption that reimagines a singular moment in history with stunning eloquence.

Dick, Philip K.  The Man in the High Castle (Vintage Books, 1992).

In an alternate world in which Hitler's forces won World War II, a man discovers that the world he lives in is an alternate one, and that the real world, where Hitler was defeated, is available only through the pages of a novel.

Dickey, James.  To the White Sea (Delta, 1994).

Award-winning and best-selling author James Dickey returns with the heart-stopping story of Muldrow, an American tail gunner who parachutes from his burning airplane into Tokyo in the final months of World War II. Fleeing the chaotic, ruined city, he instinctively travels north toward a frozen, desolate sanctuary he is certain will assure this survival--and freedom. Making his way through enemy terrain, on the lookout for both danger and opportunity, Muldrow's journey becomes the flight of a pure predator. Moving through the darkness, bombarded by haunting visions that consume his imagination, every step in his violent odyssey brings  him closer to a harrowing climax that is pure  James Dickey.

Dietz, William C.  Legion of the Damned (Ace, 1993).

This imperial space opera takes up the theme of fighting against impossible odds. At the center of the story is a futuristic French Foreign Legion made up of cyborgs and other societal misfits. The scrappy, chip-on-their-shoulder soldiers occupy their own planet in the far reaches of a contracting human space empire. When a xenophobic alien empire strikes at the humans, the legion becomes the last best hope for human salvation. The legionnaires are an oddball lot, ranging from their cut-throat, sexy commander, General Marianne Mosby, to the passionate Sergeant Bill Booly and the industrious, never-say-can't Legion General Ian St. James. Their cyberborgic compadres, with human minds trapped in armored killing machines, are rich and quirky characters as well. Throw in a Nero-like emperor more interested in his own pleasure than in the future of his empire, aristocratic conspirators working behind the scenes to take over the throne and ruthless, paranoid aliens with no way of understanding human psychology, and Dietz's ( Drifter's War ) latest tale becomes exciting and suspenseful. The humanity of the characters mixes well with the action to give this space drama real punch. (Publisher’s Weekly)

Dobson, Kenneth.  Away All Boats (Little, Brown, 1954).

Away all Boats is the story of transport ship Belinda and her crew of ordinary men through the war in the Pacific theater.

Doughty, Louise.  Fires in the Dark (Harper Perennial, 2005).

In 1927, when prosperity still reigns in Central Europe, Yenko is born to two Coppersmith Gypsies. His parents, Josef and Anna, are nomads who raise their son during the relative calm of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Soon, though, dangerous times threaten to unsettle their family, as their heritage makes them vulnerable targets for ethnic cleansing. As Germany invades Czechoslovakia and the conflicts of World War II begin to unfold, Yenko and his parents become fugitives, forced on a journey that promises only great uncertainty and offers survival as a remote possibility. In the course of their flight, the burden of an ancient tradition rests entirely on Yenko's shoulders.In capturing the desperation and perseverance of one family during an extraordinary time in history, Louise Doughty pays powerful homage to an insular and little-known culture.

Dunmore, Helen.  The Siege (Grove/Atlantic, 2003).

Helen Dunmore's astoundingly beautiful new drama of two intertwined love stories unfolding during the 1941 siege on Leningrad has already been deemed "a pinnacle in [her] fiction, and in the year's fiction too" (The Telegraph) and "a world-class novel" (The Times). At once epic and intimate, The Siege is a modern masterpiece. Sudden news of a German attack rips the Levin family — twenty-two-year-old Anna; her young brother, Kolya; and their father, Mikhail — from their countryside retreat, throwing their world into unimagined turmoil. Soon all of Leningrad is trapped by the besieging German army, but daily life must go on. While Kolya plays with his toy fort, his tiny body grows cruelly thin. While Anna dreams of an artist's life, she forages for food in the ever more desperate city. Likewise, Dunmore's lush, lyrical appreciation of life's comforts — a fire in the hearth, jam on the tongue — dwells in The Siege even amid the darkest despair. Before the siege is over, a mysterious ex-actress (Mikhail's onetime lover) and a gentle young doctor (Anna's true love, perhaps) come to the Levins' frozen little apartment. Not all of the five will survive, but their struggle and their tragedy will ultimately bear hope for a new beginning. Helen Dunmore brilliantly shows us war as seen through the eyes of ordinary people "while bravely extending her range" (The Daily Mail). The Siege is a profoundly moving celebration of love, life, and survival.

Dunning, J.  Two O'clock, Eastern Wartime (New York: Scribner, 2001).

This mystery takes place during 1942 at an eastern seaboard radio station. Not only is there a good murder to solve, but the book gives a great history of radio and the racial and gender biases of the time along with homefront issues like Japanese-American internment, war censorship, and German-American spies.