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Code of
Conduct
Author: Karen Black
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Reviewer: Bill McDonald – President of the MWSA
MORE THAN A NOVEL ABOUT A POW’S
Karen Black has done her homework and research on the POW
experience and it shows. Reading her book, “Code
of Conduct,” leaves you feeling that you just got a realistic view
of American POW’s life in captivity during the Vietnam War. She has
spent years listening to former POWS and her husband, talk and express
themselves about their personal experiences; it is obvious that she was
listening. She not only heard the small details of their life
experiences but she listened to their feelings and emotions. She used
all of that emotional and psychological energy to create a historical novel
about the Vietnam War.
Karen adds a special touch that perhaps only a woman
writer could—mixing relationship issues and sex tastefully into the story
line and making it more sensitive and compassionate in the process.
The story line deals with not only the POW captivity experiences but hits
directly or indirectly, on issues related to family, friends, marriage,
love, fellowship, honor, fate, hate, anger, sex, forgiveness, separation and
loneliness, healing, truth, justice and the American dream!
Code of
Conduct raises many sensitive issues as it captures the essence of
feelings that these POW’s and their families had upon their return home.
This is a comprehensive and compelling look through fiction at the whole
scope of the POW experience. You will not be able to put down the book
once you start. It is well written, well organized and has depth in
its characters and it uses great word imagery to convey the action to the
reader.
This book is a must read! Given MWSA’s TOP RATING.
2005 Distinguished Honor Award!
World Class!
I thumbed through this book before I actually read it, so I knew that Karen
Black could turn a phrase. Somehow I picked up the impression that
Code of
Conduct was more of a steamy romance than a novel about the
Vietnam Prisoner of War experience. Well, it is a romance. It's also a
tragedy, an adventure story, and a more than a bit of a thriller. The book
follows the career of a Navy fighter pilot from the time his aircraft is
shot down over North Vietnam in 1966, through seven harrowing years of
torture and confinement in the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison camp, to his
return to America and his family. Then, just when he is about to regain
everything that he has lost, his dream is snatched away. I was expecting a
simple romance novel. What I got was an incredibly adept chronicle of
suffering and courage, loss and recovery, devastation, and - ultimately -
healing.
Jeff Edwards, Author of
Torpedo
News Story of Karen Black and her book
worth checking out:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/jenkins/20021216-9999_1m16jenkins.html |
2005
- 2009 MWSA