Sunday, February 18, 2007

Pg. 69: "A Perfect Hell"

John Nadler is the author of Searching for Sofia and, more recently, A Perfect Hell: The True Story of the Black Devils, the Forefathers of the Special Forces.

I asked John to apply the "page 69 test" to his book. Here is what he reported:
When first hearing of Marshal's page 69 formula for book appreciation, I wondered if the symbolism was spicily sexual. You know, a reference to the position the French call Soixante-Neuf, and the Kansas legislature calls Statutory Sodomy.

Of course, page 69 is an infinitely sensible point to delve into any book since it is almost always the story's point of no return.

But when delving into my own book, the WWII narrative history A Perfect Hell I realized I was right the first time. I had hoped that my page 69 would be a moment of deadly decision on the part of my characters: the men of the First Special Service Force (FSSF), the U.S. commando unit history would remember as the Black Devils and the pioneers of today's Special Forces.

In fact, page 69, true to the best French calculus, described a fanciful moment of romance between four characters during a summer of one of the most terrible years of 20th Century.

1942: a new unit promising extreme danger and early entry to combat is created, and volunteers are called across the U.S. and Canada. Two young men, Joe Glass and Lorin Waling – the former, a Great Lakes seaman; the latter, a prairie farm boy – answer the call, and end up in Helena, Montana, where the secret unit (and 2000 fellow commandos) is based. Helena's town fathers adopt the young warriors. And so do the daughters. On page 69 the fast wartime friends, would-be commandos Joe and Lorin, sneak from their beds, barracks, and base, and rendezvous with their two local girlfriends.

The women, Dorothy and Steffie, have driven a car, headlights darkened, to the rear of the base where there are only snakes, coolies, and a limitless nightscape of prairie. They avoid capture from a sentry by hiding under a blanket on the floorboards until the boys arrive. And when Joe and Lorin get there, the two couples drive to Helena for an AWOL night on the town.

This evening of desertion is the start of a romance that would survive a world war and last a lifetime.
Thanks to John for the input.

Read the prologue to the Canadian edition and the prologue to the US edition.

Among the praise for A Perfect Hell:
"[A] superb popular history.... This solidly researched and smartly written volume is a fitting tribute to a unique group of warriors."
Publishers Weekly

“Well-written, simply crafted and deeply evocative, Nadler's blend of storytelling and research puts a human face on the war, one not often seen in military histories. In A Perfect Hell, the anonymous soldiers become men, with their own stories and memories.”
Winnipeg Free Press

A Perfect Hell is a solid addition to the many histories on Canada’s proud war tradition, and a darn good read about the outsized acts of decent, ordinary men.” –Toronto Star
Last year Olen Steinhauer posed 5 Questions to John about his book and writing.

Read some of John's feature articles, including his TIME interview with Istvan Szabo.

Prompted by the death of E. Howard Hunt last month, John asked: do conspiracies exist?

Visit John's official website and Contemporary Nomad, a group blog.

Previous "page 69 tests:"
David Lehman, When a Woman Loves a Man
Gary Krist, The White Cascade
Vicki Lane, Art's Blood
David Silbey, A War of Frontier and Empire
Peggy Orenstein, Waiting for Daisy
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, My Year Inside Radical Islam
Mark Coggins, Candy from Strangers
Arthur Allen, Vaccine
Beth Ann Fennelly, Great with Child
Kenneth Gross, Shylock Is Shakespeare
Trinie Dalton, Wide Eyed
Barbara J. King, Evolving God
Patrick Anderson, The Triumph of the Thriller
Linda R. Hirshman, Get to Work
Lynne Tillman, American Genius, A Comedy
Patrick Radden Keefe, Chatter
Dana Stabenow, A Deeper Sleep
Siobhan Roberts, King of Infinite Space
Erin McKean, That's Amore!
Michael Lowenthal, Charity Girl
Niraj Kapur, Heaven's Delight
Keith Dixon, The Art of Losing
David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old
Mary Sharratt, The Vanishing Point
David Fulmer, The Dying Crapshooter's Blues
Anya Ulinich, Petropolis
Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization
Olen Steinhauer, Liberation Movements
Andrei Markovits, Uncouth Nation
Julie Kistler, Scandal
Robert Ward, Four Kinds of Rain
Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist
William Landay, The Strangler
Kate Holden, In My Skin
Brian Wansick, Mindless Eating
Noria Jablonski, Human Oddities
Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity
Neal Pollack, Alternadad
Bella DePaulo, Singled Out
Steve Hamilton, A Stolen Season
Eric Klinenberg, Fighting for Air
Donna Moore, ...Go to Helena Handbasket
Louis Bayard, The Pale Blue Eye
Neal Thompson, Riding with the Devil
Sherry Argov, Why Men Marry Bitches
P.J. Parrish, An Unquiet Grave
Tyler Knox, Kockroach
Andrew Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency
Laura Wiess, Such a Pretty Girl
Jeremy Blachman, Anonymous Lawyer
Andrew Pyper, The Wildfire Season
Wendy Werris, An Alphabetical Life
Laura Lippman, What the Dead Know
Meghan Daum, The Quality of Life Report
Scott Reynolds Nelson, Steel Drivin' Man
Richard Aleas, Little Girl Lost
Paul Collins, The Trouble With Tom
John McFetridge, Dirty Sweet
Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero
Bill Crider, Murder Among the OWLS
Zachary Shore, Breeding Bin Ladens
Rolf Potts, Vagabonding
Matt Haig, The Dead Fathers Club
Lawrence Light, Fear & Greed
Simon Read, In The Dark
Sandra Ruttan, Suspicious Circumstances
Henry Ansgar Kelly, Satan: A Biography
Alison Gaylin, You Kill Me
Gayle Lynds, The Last Spymaster
Jim Lehrer, The Phony Marine
Julie Phillips, James Tiptree, Jr.
Debra Ginsberg, Blind Submission
Sarah Katherine Lewis, Indecent
Peter Orner, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo
William Easterly, The White Man's Burden
Danielle Trussoni, Falling Through the Earth
Andrew Blechman, Pigeons
Anne Perry, A Christmas Secret
Elaine Showalter, Faculty Towers
Kat Richardson, Greywalker
Michael Bess, Choices Under Fire
Masha Hamilton, The Camel Bookmobile
Alex Beam, Gracefully Insane
Nicholas Lemann, Redemption
Jason Sokol, There Goes My Everything
Wendy Steiner, Venus in Exile
Josh Chafetz, Democracy’s Privileged Few
Anne Frasier, Pale Immortal
Michael Lewis, The Blind Side
David A. Bell, The First Total War
Brett Ellen Block, The Lightning Rule
Rosanna Hertz, Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice
Jason Starr, Lights Out
Robert Vitalis, America's Kingdom
Stephen Elliott, My Girlfriend Comes To The City And Beats Me Up
Colin McGinn, The Power of Movies
Sean Chercover, Big City, Bad Blood
Sigrid Nunez, The Last of Her Kind
Stanley Fish, How Milton Works
James Longenbach, The Resistance to Poetry
Margaret Lowrie Robertson, Season of Betrayal
Sy Montgomery, The Good Good Pig
Allison Burnett, The House Beautiful
Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, A History
Ed Lynskey, The Dirt-Brown Derby
Cindy Dyson, And She Was
Simon Blackburn, Truth
Brian Freeman, Stripped
Alyson M. Cole, The Cult of True Victimhood
Jeff Biggers, In the Sierra Madre
Jeff Broadwater, George Mason, Forgotten Founder
Alicia Steimberg, Andrea Labinger (trans.), The Rainforest
Michael Grunwald, The Swamp
Darrin McMahon, Happiness: A History
Leo Braudy, From Chivalry to Terrorism
David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie
Leah Hager Cohen, Train Go Sorry
Chris Grabenstein, Slay Ride
David Helvarg, Blue Frontier
Marina Warner, Phantasmagoria
Bill Crider, A Mammoth Murder
Robert W. Bennett, Taming the Electoral College
Nicholas Stern et al, Stern Review Report
Kerry Emanuel, Divine Wind
Adam Langer, The Washington Story
Michael Scott Moore, Too Much of Nothing
Frank Schaeffer, Baby Jack
Wyn Cooper, Postcards from the Interior
Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov
Maureen Ogle, Ambitious Brew
Cass Sunstein, Infotopia
Paul W. Kahn, Out of Eden
Paul Lewis, Cracking Up
Pagan Kennedy, Confessions of a Memory Eater
David Greenberg, Nixon's Shadow
Duane Swierczynski, The Wheelman
George Levine, Darwin Loves You
John Barlow, Intoxicated
Alicia Steimberg, The Rainforest
Alan Wolfe, Does American Democracy Still Work?
John Dickerson, On Her Trail
Marcus Sakey, The Blade Itself
Randy Boyagoda, Governor of the Northern Province
John Gittings, The Changing Face of China
Rachel Kadish, Tolstoy Lied
Eric Rauchway, Blessed Among Nations
Tim Brookes, Guitar and other books
Ruth Padel, Tigers in Red Weather
William Haywood Henderson, Augusta Locke
Jed Horne, Breach of Faith
Robert Greer, The Fourth Perspective
David Plotz, The Genius Factory
Michael Allen Dymmoch, White Tiger
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, Civilizing the Enemy
Tom Lutz, Doing Nothing
Libby Fischer Hellmann, A Shot To Die For
Nelson Algren, The Man With the Golden Arm
Bob Harris, Prisoner of Trebekistan
Elaine Flinn, Deadly Collection
Louise Welsh, The Bullet Trick
Gregg Hurwitz, Last Shot
Martha Powers, Death Angel
N.M. Kelby, Whale Season
Mario Acevedo, The Nymphos of Rocky Flats
Dominic Smith, The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre
Simon Blackburn, Lust
Linda L. Richards, Calculated Loss
Kevin Guilfoile, Cast of Shadows
Ronlyn Domingue, The Mercy of Thin Air
Shari Caudron, Who Are You People?
Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics
John Sutherland, How to Read a Novel
Steven Miles, Oath Betrayed
Alan Brown, Audrey Hepburn's Neck
Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale

--Marshal Zeringue