Rating: 
Summary: IGNORE THE COMPROMISE RATING - READ THE REVIEW
Review: This book could easily have been titled THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JAKE RICKMEYER, or A NAVY MAN WITH THE SCARS OF VIETNAM. It is a fictional autobiography, written in the first person and is the first novel written by the author, Patrick Johnston, following a very varied and quite nomadic career. Due to family problems, Jake Rickmeyer leaves Hodskins, Oklahoma before his high school graduation and although underage enlists in the Navy during WWII and sees action in the Pacific before the end of the war. Jake decides to make the Navy his career and sees his next action during the Korean War and then subsequently in Vietnam. He is a conscientious seaman who performs his duties well and earns the admiration and friendship of many of those brave men with whom he serves. These include an Admiral and a US Senator, due both to his achievements and also specific events which put each of them individually in his debt. Jake also marries too young, but long after his divorce he and his ex-wife eventually reunite. However, she remains justifiably concerned about the dangers he faces. Men under his are killed, and he eventually ends up with a chest full of ribbons for his service, his combat actions and his injuries. In other words, Jake is a quintessential example of those brave individuals in the Armed Forces who protect us and make the world safer for democracy and freedom. Unfortunately, in my view the author tries to do too much and thus appeals to a limited audience. (E.g., Jake's whole experience in WWII takes less than twenty pages.) Thus, while the reader comes to respect and care about Jake, the action never becomes so compelling that it actually engages the reader. There are many interesting observations, not only about war, combat and military service, but also about such happenings during that period as the start of the Civil Rights struggle in the South and, of course, the political upheaval concerning the Vietnam War. But these are all touched upon only briefly, and never with intensity or real passion. Thus, this book did not particularly appeal to me for the same reason that I seldom read biographies and autobiographies, even when they involve the lives of very interesting and important people. I prefer a complicated plot, intense action or at least real mystery or suspense (hopefully combined with clever conversation and new insights about the subjects involved) rather a simple narrative account of events. As some previous reviews indicate, this book will undoubtedly appeal to those readers who served in the Navy and can relate to Jake or who want a relatively accurate and insightful narrative about what such a life might have entailed. (Although there is not surprisingly too much profanity to make it suitable for young readers, for whom it might otherwise provide a great historical education.) So if my description makes it sound like the book would appeal to your reading interests, you should purchase it and will undoubtedly feel that it deserves at least four stars. However, while the author accomplished his goals, I believe that that for the majority of readers such as myself it is only worth a two star rating; so I have compromised by splitting the difference. I should add that this is a print on demand book that suffers from the usual spelling and grammatical mistakes that most such endeavors contain. They are not disruptive but frequent enough to be noticeable. As often happens in the case of works published by smaller presses, the author has been frustrated by the relative lack of promotion that his novel has received. Therefore, he contacted me to request that I review it. (He is a complete stranger to me, we have no friends at all in common.) Since I am always anxious to discover new authors, I agreed to his request despite the hesitancy that I expressed to him since the nature of the work seemed somewhat removed from my normal interests. In retrospect my concern was justified; I only hope that this review manages to be fair to him and at the same time helps the readers of this review decide whether the cbook would be of interest to them. Tucker Andersen
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