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Read Ordinary Heroes (2006)

Ordinary Heroes (2006)

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3.8 of 5 Votes: 2
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ISBN
0446617482 (ISBN13: 9780446617482)
Language
English
Publisher
grand central publishing

Ordinary Heroes (2006) - Plot & Excerpts

Stewart Dubinsky knew his father had served in World War II. And he'd been told how David Dubin (as his father had Americanized the name that Stewart later reclaimed) had rescued Stewart's mother from the horror of the Balingen concentration camp. But when he discovers, after his father's death, a packet of wartime letters to a former fiancée, and learns of his father's court-martial and imprisonment, he is plunged into the mystery of his family's secret history and driven to uncover the truth about this enigmatic, distant man who'd always refused to talk about his war.As he pieces together his father's past through military archives, letters, and, finally, notes from a memoir his father wrote while in prison, secretly preserved by the officer who defended him, Stewart starts to assemble a dramatic and baffling chain of events. He learns how Dubin, a JAG lawyer attached to Patton's Third Army and desperate for combat experience, got more than he bargained for when he was ordered to arrest Robert Martin, a wayward OSS officer who, despite his spectacular bravery with the French Resistance, appeared to be acting on orders other than his commanders'. In pursuit of Martin, Dubin and his sergeant are parachuted into Bastogne just as the Battle of the Bulge reaches its apex. Pressed into the leadership of a desperately depleted rifle company, the men are forced to abandon their quest for Martin and his fiery, maddeningly elusive comrade, Gita, as they fight for their lives through carnage and chaos, the likes of which Dubin could never have imagined.In reconstructing the terrible events and agonizing choices his father faced on the battlefield, in the courtroom, and in love, Stewart gains a closer understanding of his past, of his father's character, and of the brutal nature of war itself.

This is my first time to read Scott Turow and I understand that this book is a departure from his normal writing of mystery/thrillers. He has written several nonfiction books including one on the death penalty and another on his first year at Harvard Law School as well as this historical fiction offering. There is a contingent of lawyers who have added writing fiction books to their achievements. Turow is a skilled writer and he puts his legal knowledge to good use.Turow appears to give away the conclusion about a quarter of the way into the book. He pulls this tactic off well and adds suspense. You might think you know something but, like a good mystery, you must be careful about taking things at face value.There is an interesting several pages “A Note on Sources” that is worth reading if you would like to know why Ordinary Heroes is characterized as historical fiction and what sources Turow used in combining the real with the imaginary. Among other sources, his use of his father’s war experiences and correspondence is exemplary of how he developed his story with some fact and some fiction. It is a book that takes you into war, up close with all the horror and terror. It seemed that Turow must have been a contest to see who can be the most gruesome. You can skip the next paragraph if you want to take my word for it that Turow might just have had the contest winner.(view spoiler)[I uncovered one soldier whose head had been blown off. The frozen gray brain matter, looking like what curdles from overcooked meat, was all around him. Somehow the back of his cranium was still intact, resembling a porcelain bowl, through which the stump of his spinal cord protruded. (hide spoiler)]

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

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