Eagle & Crane

by Suzanne Rindell Narrated by Elizabeth Romanski

Overview

Two young daredevil flyers confront ugly truths and family secrets during the U.S. internment of Japanese citizens during World War II, from the author of*The Other Typist*and*Three-Martini Lunch.

Louis Thorn and Haruto "Harry" Yamada--Eagle and Crane--are the star attractions of Earl Shaw's Flying Circus, a daredevil (and not exactly legal) flying act that traverses Depression-era California. The young men have a complicated relationship, thanks to the Thorn family's belief that the Yamadas--Japanese immigrants--stole land that should have stayed in the Thorn family.

When Louis and Harry become aerial stuntmen, performing death-defying tricks high above audiences, they're both drawn to Shaw's smart and appealing stepdaughter, Ava Brooks. After the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and one of Shaw's planes mysteriously crashes and two charred bodies are discovered in it, authorities conclude that the victims were Harry and his father, Kenichi, who had escaped from a Japanese internment camp they had been sent to by the federal government. To the local sheriff, the situation is open and shut. But to the lone FBI agent assigned to the case, the details don't add up.

Thus begins an investigation into what really happened to cause the plane crash, who was in the plane when it fell from the sky, and why no one involved seems willing to tell the truth. By turns an absorbing mystery and a fascinating exploration of race, family and loyalty,*Eagle and Crane*is that rare novel that tells a gripping story as it explores a terrible era of American history.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Praise for Eagle & Crane

“Suzanne Rindell takes to the heavens in this glorious story of two daring aviators during the Great Depression. She’s written an epic love story set against a time of upheaval, suspicion and change. A magnificent novel from a great writer.”—Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Kiss Carlo

“Rindell joins the ranks of popular historical fiction authors Kristin Hannah and Kate Quinn with this fast-paced, gripping novel that compellingly explores a tumultuous era of 20th-century history.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Masterfully told, completely immersive, with indepth characters who illustrate the social complexities of the time, this is an unforgettable historical novel, similar in impact to Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson, and Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Rindell's sweeping generational saga will please fans of immersive, meticulously researched historicals.”—Publishers Weekly

“Wildly ambitious and filled with heartbreak (I love heartbreak), Suzanne Rindell’s third novel mesmerizingly pilots us through the Depression, the 1930s, Pearl Harbor, and the love one fierce young woman has for two very different aviators. Passionate, profound and an absolutely daredevil act of imagination.”—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times-bestselling author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World

"In this blazing saga about a flying circus, Rindell performs death-defying plot twists that race toward the shocking conclusion. Eagle & Crane is a majestic historical novel that is profoundly relevant in today’s world.”—Fiona Davis, author of The Address and The Dollhouse

“A white-knuckled historical mystery and collision course of cultures, Eagle & Crane threads a fascinating tale through the half-silenced world of Japanese internment in America. Timely, expertly researched, and provocative.”—Dominic Smith, New York Times-bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

“Elegantly interweaving a lyrical love triangle with the spectacle of Depression-era barnstorming, the plight of Japanese Americans during the Second World War, and a bitter family feud spanning generations, Eagle & Crane poignantly plumbs still deeper waters: how far loyalty and friendship can be tested, and what it means to be an American.”—Lyndsay Faye, Edgar-nominated author of Jane Steele and the Timothy Wilde trilogy

Kirkus Reviews

2018-04-16
Harry Yamada and Louis Thorn work together as stunt pilots—close but competitive friends—until World War II upends their lives.In 1943, an FBI agent named Bonner arrives in Newcastle, California. He's investigating Harry Yamada and his father, Kenichi, who've recently escaped from an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, and wants to know if they've returned to the farm they signed over at the war's outbreak to their neighbor Louis Thorn, at the time Harry's flying partner and now a flight instructor for the Air Corps. As Bonner questions 23-year-old Louis on his front porch, the two men are shocked to watch a plane fall out of the sky in a fiery crash. Inside are two bodies, one identifiable as Kenichi, the other charred beyond recognition but assumed to be Harry. Not long afterward, Ava Brooks, who has supposedly been helping Louis care for the Yamadas' orchard, turns up at the house. Soon the novel is moving back and forth in time, interspersing Bonner's investigation of the crash with the evolving prewar love triangle of Louis, Harry, and Ada—who met in 1940 when the two young pilots joined Ada's con-artist stepfather's barnstorming troupe—as well as with the history of the multigenerational feud between the Yamadas, portrayed as upstanding, almost saintly immigrants, and the struggling, less sympathetic Thorns. Bonner's growing obsession with the case and the mysterious sexual attention he enjoys from the young landlady of a Newcastle boardinghouse are two of the contrived threads with which Rindell (Three-Martini Lunch, 2016, etc.) eventually ties up the flimsy plot. While the Yamadas' unfair treatment clearly alludes to today's immigrant experience, what is more developed is the character study of Louis Thorn, who faces conflicted loyalties and complex moral choices.Overlong and woodenly earnest, without the leavening wit of Rindell's The Other Typist (2013), the novel does cohere in its attempt to plumb the complexities of love and hate.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169441468
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	07/03/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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Excerpted from "Eagle & Crane"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Suzanne Rindell.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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