The Long March Home
The Long March Home: A World War II Novel of the Pacific
By: Marcus Brotherton and Tosca Lee
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2023]
“We didn’t come through hell just to die when it’s over. If we have to run— if we have to swim off this island— we’re gettin’ through this. The three of us— all home alive. That’s our only aim from here on out.”
This is a hard book to read. Because it’s a book of war and of being a prisoner of war.
The atrocities of WWII we’re familiar with, but in a different location than Europe— the Pacific.
This is the story of three teenage boys— best friends and voluntary soldiers— fighting near Manila. While the boys are specifically fiction, this book is based on true stories.
Marcus Brotherton is known for his non-fiction work and Tosca Lee (one of my favorite authors) has written all kinds of genres, but she is a researcher and whether she is writing fantasy, thrillers, or historical fiction, you can tell that she has put in the work to bring her characters and the setting to life!
While I obviously can’t evaluate its accuracy on my own account, some brief Google searches support the portrayals in the book, and I believe they depicted the environment and the experiences with a lot of authenticity.
The historical context is this:
After Pearl Harbor was bombed, Imperial Japan invaded the Bataan Peninsula. American soldiers under the command of General Douglas MacArthur had been stationed there to keep Japan from accessing Manila Bay. They couldn’t hold Japan off and new troops were not sent to their aid. Eventually they surrendered.
In 1942, the soldiers were then forced on The Bataan Death March— a 65 mile march to Camp O’Donnell. Besides being malnourished and weak, soldiers were shot or bayoneted for any number of changing reasons. An estimated 17,000 men died on the march alone. More American and Filipino soldiers died in the aftermath.
Another historical element Brotherton and Lee included in their story that was interesting was the female Filipina guerilla leader— Felipa Culala— who led many successful raids and missions against the Japanese with her small band of guerilla soldiers.
Europe is typically the main focus of WWII stories so it was eye-opening to be reminded of all the other battles being fought around the world at the same time. This book will get you on Google, that’s for sure!
The Long March Home chronicles the experience of these friends— Jimmy, Billy, and Hank— from the POV of Jimmy. They are among the surrendered soldiers and endure hardship after hardship. The only thing that kept them going was their friendship and commitment to keeping each other alive and a girl back home they all had a connection to.
The girl is Claire. Billy’s older sister. Jimmy’s best friend since birth and his eventual romantic interest. Hank also had some romantic interest, but Jimmy, Billy, and Claire are like his family since he didn’t have much of his own.
Jimmy, son of a preacher, was supposed to follow in his father’s footsteps. Go to seminary, marry (Claire), stay near home and do the family business. But Jimmy had bigger aspirations. He saw fighting in the war a chance to step out in his own way.
While he’s in the Philippines with Hank and Billy (before Pearl Harbor), he finally feels some freedom.
“If this ain’t paradise, I don’t know what is… as long as I got my two best friends, I have all I need.”
But of course, paradise on earth is always short-lived. Everything changes and their chances of all surviving look bleak. Is their friendship strong enough to continue to give them the desire to live at all? And if it is, can they physically handle the trauma inflicted on their bodies and minds?
The book bounces back and forth between the WWII scenes and their collective past in Mobile, Alabama, where they came from. The ‘past’ chapters help us understand the depth of the boys’ friendships and what bonds them. It also shows us what happened between Claire and Hank and Claire and Jimmy. In some ways, she is the glue that holds them all together, but now they’re on the other side of the globe from her.
Jimmy and Hank especially feel the commitment to keep Billy, her brother, safe, considering he lied about his age to enlist and is younger than the rest of them.
I like that it was just from one of the boys’ POVs. Sometimes these books can try to do too much by getting us into each of their heads but I think it was right to focus on Jimmy. I still felt like he provided us with enough information and observation where the other two boys were never too far away.
One aspect of the Mobile chapters I didn’t like was the portrayal of Jimmy’s father. Being a pastor’s kid, myself, I’m always critical of familial relationships in homes of pastors/preachers when they don’t reflect my own upbringing. I feel like it’s easy to make the pastor a fire and brimstone, strict, no grace, no mercy kind of man. And perhaps that arrangement was more common during that time period, but I always find myself defensive about it, because that is not what God has called pastors— or any Christians— to be, and I can speak from my own experience that preacher fathers can prioritize their family and love them with gentleness and grace and support. And they can actually preach sermons that people aren’t bored or afraid of.
Anyway, I do appreciate how they wrapped up that relationship and it lessened my original critique.
I’m glad they included the Mobile, AL backstory because it was a brief reprieve from the war chapters that I definitely needed.
Like I already said, this was a hard book to read. The things they had to go through. The things they survived. It’s truly horrific.
“I’ve seen men sit down hard with bullet wounds, talk for a little while like they were only stunned, and die two minutes later. Soldiers blown to more pieces than can be scraped together in a box. Barrios of civilians bombed to nothing just because they were in the way.”
They hardly had any food. They ate a horse, a monkey, a lizard, a cat, whatever they could get their hands on. Not only were they beaten and worked to death, but they did it all while hungry and diseased with dysentery and all number of digestive issues.
Every time I thought maybe the boys would catch a break, something new would come and it was often worse than the last.
It made me realize the significance of the Geneva Convention and I am grateful for the countries who have signed it. It requires humane treatment of POWs— food, drink, and medical treatment. What a vastly different experience without it.
Although it may be considered a spoiler, I think some readers may need to know that this story is not all death. There are some rays of happiness and the ending is a positive turn.
If it’s too hard for you to read about war and prisoner hardships, you may not want to read this one.
I know some reviewers have knocked it a bit because it was published by a Christian publishing company but still contains some ‘less than Christian’ content in terms of language or behaviors.
But having read plenty of non-Christian books, I think these authors did a great job of writing it and giving authenticity to the grittiness of the environment and the realities of soldier life without going too far. It could have easily been crammed with f- and s-words and more crude talk but it wasn’t and I appreciate that!
At some point, when writing the truths of war, things can’t be sanitized. I think this book was balanced in that way and I have no complaint.
It was a book written as historical fiction and not meant to be faith-rooted. So if you read it for what it was meant to be, I think you’ll appreciate it more.
If war scenes aren’t triggering for you, I would recommend this book. Especially if you are into WWII books. This will be different than a lot of WWII books out there and will add another facet to the global war that shaped so much of the world.
I read this entire book in one sitting while on a plane, which is not the most ideal scenario, so I think I have some fogginess about how I felt about the book vs how I felt about the plane. I would avoid that situation. I think it probably would have been better to read it over a few days instead.
Nonetheless, I’m glad I read it and would recommend.
[Content Advisory: minimal-to-no swearing (that I remember… I know they narrated it like ‘he cursed’ but didn’t actually write it out; minimal sexual content; more than moderate gore/violence as it is about war]
This book released May, 2023. You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
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