Review of The Seventh Cruise: WWII Novel

One of my favorite people in my Writer’s Club, Karl Stewart, recently published The Seventh Cruise.  The Amazon link, which also includes a plot summary, is here.  The author’s website is here.

Stewart bases his novels on his real-life family, starting with his great-grandfather, See-Bird Carpenter, a Choctaw Indian who made a name for himself in rodeo.  The second novel in the series is based on the Hatfield and McCoy conflict, because his great-grandmother–See-Bird’s wife–was related to the Hatfields.  In the third book, his father, still a young teenager, leaves home to join the Navy in WWII.  He serves on the USS Hancock.

Battle scenes are vividly described, framed by a love story between Stewart’s parents, here given the fictional names of Stu and Maggie.  We also see the ever-present threat of PTSD, as the sailors and airmen fight to keep the images of war from their heads.  Stewart based the events of the book on the real-life experiences of various survivors of WWII.

And the occasional chapter–including the opening–is from the point of view of  a kamikaze pilot, based on a real-life pilot who decided not to crash into the Hancock.

You can read about all three books, and learn how to buy them, at the author’s website here.