Book 35: Sunrise Over Fallujah

TITLE: Sunrise Over Fallujah
AUTHOR: Walter Dean Myers
STARTED: July 2, 2008
FINISHED: July 7, 2008
PAGES: 290
GENRE: Juvenile

FIRST SENTENCE: When I was home on leave I reread the letters you sent from Vietnam to my father.

SUMMARY: [From barnesandnoble.com] Operation Iraqi Freedom, that's the code name. But the young men and women in the military's Civil Affairs Battalion have a simpler name for it: WAR.

In this new novel, Walter Dean Myers looks at a contemporary war with the same power and searing insight he brought to the Vietnam war of his classic, Fallen Angels. He creates memorable characters like the book's narrator, Birdy, a young recruit from Harlem who's questioning why he even enlisted; Marla, a blond, tough-talking, wisecracking gunner; Jonesy, a guitar-playing bluesman who just wants to make it back to Georgia and open a club; and a whole unit of other young men and women and drops them incountry in Iraq, where they are supposed to help secure and stabilize Iraq and successfully interact with the Iraqi people. The young civil affairs soldiers soon find their definition of "winning" ever more elusive and their good intentions being replaced by terms like "survival" and "despair."

Caught in the crossfire, Myers' richly rendered characters are just beginning to understand the meaning of war in this powerful, realistic novel of our times.

THOUGHTS: It didn't take me longer to figure out that was a juvenile fiction book. For a war book the language, violence, and gore were at a minimum. The themes of war, however, were still present. Myers does a remarkable job of tailoring adult themes to his younger audience. He gets the emotion and the busy-bored cycle of this war just right. Some passages were confusing but, on the whole, this was a pretty enjoyable book. I would recommend this to younger readers who want an introduction to more mature themes.

RATING: 6/10 [Good]