What do You think about Ordinary Heroes (2006)?
Retired reporter Stewart Dubinsky last made an appearance in Presumed Innocent (1987). Here, the self-lacerating Dubinsky delves deep into his family's wartime history__one loosely based on Turow's father's experiences. For critics, the question is whether a legal-thriller writer can succeed in another genre__and the answers vary. Out of the courtroom, Turow remains an effective storyteller whose characters (Gita in particular) and details of war create immediacy and intrigue. However, his usual spark seems to be missing. A few critics faulted the novel for introducing too much history, too many mysteries, and too many themes__from war to love to family secrets. In the end, the personal dramas that characterize Turow's best works carry this story-within-a-story, too.This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
—Bookmarks Magazine
Turow made some comments n the last CD after this novel was done. He said his father had been a doctor at a field hospital near Boulonge during the Battle of the Bulge and the experiences affected his life. Unlike many vets, he did talk about his experiences. Turow said that the nearest character to his father is the doctor at the field hospital where Our Hero, David, is treated.Turow also said that the letters David sent to his fiancee were very much based on letters his father had send his mother and some even had parts quoted directly.An entertaining, if not very suspenseful book, with rather long expositions by various characters. The Big Surprise at the end was not much of one. My mother had a West Point friend who perished in that battle -- she was married to my father by then. She had attended a West Point ball with him and I still have the women's West Point ring he gave her. She had sent him a Christmas card and it was returned weeks later, simply stamped DECEASED.I have tried unsuccessfully to contact the family to see if they would like the ring. I have found a West Point publication about his death with his photo. He and my father looked a lot alike.
—Lynn Pribus
Stewart Dubinsky, a middle-aged reporter, knew his father served in Europe during WWII, but the war was a subject off-limits in the Dubinski household. Upon is father's death, Dubinski discovers that his father had been court-martialed and imprisoned, and sets out to find the decades-old answers. The story that follows is an emotional and painfully realistic drama of the horrors of war in the European theater.In early 1944, and Dubinsky's father, David Dubin, is a young lawyer assigned to the US Army's JAG Corps headquartered in Nancy, France, recently re-occupied by the Allies. He is assigned to investigate the alleged insubordination of Robert Martin, a Major in the CIA-forerunner OSS. Martin is a shadowy figure; a living legend of unparalleled heroism and bravery behind Nazi lines, but perhaps also a spy the loosely allied Soviets. Gita Lodz, a Polish immigrant turned French resistance commando, is the inseparable companion of Martin, setting up the first two legs of the triangle that Dubin not surprisingly completes. In pursuing Martin - and Gita - through northern Europe, the lawyer Dubin finds himself pressed into service as a front-line infantry officer to replenish Allied troops decimated by the Nazis during the Battle of the Bulge. Told from foxhole-level perspective, Turow paints a horrific picture of the war, culminating in a morbidly riveting portrayal of a Nazi concentration camp and ending in an unexpected twist to Major Robert Martin's story.Delivered with the historical authority and authenticity, Turow applies his trademarked plots, clever twists, and human struggles, adding up to a moving and educational drama. Excellent!
—Florence Millo
