Key takeaways §
- The surrender in Bataan is recounted in part II of the book, and seems to be fairly historically accurate. The US suffered enormous losses and there was the “death march” to a horrendous camp for prisoners of war. The book’s main character is first a prisoner of war and then participates in gerilla warfare with the Fillipinos against the Japanese.
- There are almost no female characters that are active participants in the world, Liza and Stella Banning are very passive, and the preacher’s wife is just there for the male antagonist to have a way to steal the Banning’s land. It’s the way the south worked back then, but Grisham does not portray the thoughts and feelings of these women at all.
- I enjoyed the flashback in the middle and the courtroom drama, but the family aspect didn’t really grab me. Perhaps because everyone but Pete Banning seemed so passive.