First of all, I was captivated by the narrator and main character James–the same Jim that was in Twain’s Huck Finn but who in Everett’s hands is completely reimagined and updated through the lens of the 21st century. I also enjoyed how Everett maintained the general outlines of Twain’s story but in each instance reshapes the narrator through a slave’s eyes. We are invited to enter the story through the complex interior world of James. In this version, Huck is still important and maintains his moral compass, but it is James who takes the high moral ground by saving Huck. A wonderful and exhilerating ride through the world of pre-Civil War America.

I enjoyed several of Boyne’s other novels, including The Heart’s Invisible Furies and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, but I loved this one even more. Like The Boy in the Striped Pajama, this book is about the holocaust. However, Boyne’s approach to his subect is completely original. Instead of giving us the horrific but often overdone details about the camps, he purposely avoids them, with the main character, Gretel, simply calling Auschwitz that “other place.” Alternating chapters from present to past, Boyne consciously delays the worst that Gretel has experienced until well into the novel. And juxtaposed to her past guilt is her present redemption in trying to save her neighbor’s child Henry. Finally Gretel is a marvelous narrator–honest but cagey, brave but often cowardly, a woman who is so complex and engaging that the reader is completely swept off their feet.

Swift Sword is a gritty, rigorously researched nonfiction book about a single battle on a single day in Vietnam. It taught me–someone whose friends and family went to Vietnam but who never went myself–what the gut-level experience was–one of fear, terror, courage, humility, and true valor for those having to experience the war. The prose, with its abundance of carefully researched details and abundant interviews, put me right in the action. It compared to the great novel Matterhorn as well as to Homer’s The Iliad for immersing me in the profound chaos and terror of being under fire. An overwhelming experience.