Ordinary Heroes: A Novel

by Scott Turow Narrated by Edward Herrmann

Overview

Stewart Dubinsky knew his father had served in World War II. And he'd been told how David Dubin (as his father had Americanized the name that Stewart later reclaimed) had rescued Stewart's mother from the horror of the Balingen concentration camp. But when he discovers, after his father's death, a packet of wartime letters to a former fiancée, and learns of his father's court-martial and imprisonment, he is plunged into the mystery of his family's secret history and driven to uncover the truth about this enigmatic, distant man who'd always refused to talk about his war.

As he pieces together his father's past through military archives, letters, and, finally, notes from a memoir his father wrote while in prison, secretly preserved by the officer who defended him, Stewart starts to assemble a dramatic and baffling chain of events. He learns how Dubin, a JAG lawyer attached to Patton's Third Army and desperate for combat experience, got more than he bargained for when he was ordered to arrest Robert Martin, a wayward OSS officer who, despite his spectacular bravery with the French Resistance, appeared to be acting on orders other than his commanders'. In pursuit of Martin, Dubin and his sergeant are parachuted into Bastogne just as the Battle of the Bulge reaches its apex. Pressed into the leadership of a desperately depleted rifle company, the men are forced to abandon their quest for Martin and his fiery, maddeningly elusive comrade, Gita, as they fight for their lives through carnage and chaos, the likes of which Dubin could never have imagined.

In reconstructing the terrible events and agonizing choices his father faced on the battlefield, in the courtroom, and in love, Stewart gains a closer understanding of his past, of his father's character, and of the brutal nature of war itself.

Editorial Reviews

Like many other GIs, Stewart Dubinsky's dad always refused to talk about his experiences in World War II; but Stewart had been told that his father had rescued his mother from the horrors of a German concentration camp. Then, after his father's demise, Dubinsky finds a packet of letters that challenges every lofty conception he holds of his old man. However, as he probes deeper into his father's past, Stewart discovers that war sometimes has a way of undermining every expectation. A first-rate thriller by a master of the craft.

Janet Maslin

… Ordinary Heroes works best through vivid, anecdotal descriptions: authentic-sounding stories of foxhole ordeals, battlefield casualties and a particularly terrifying parachute drop. Even when expressed stiltedly ("and tears still would not come, leaving me in a state of constipated agitation"), these memories have immediacy. The author's anguish about war is unmistakably real.
— The New York Times

Kirkus Reviews

In a change of venue from contemporary courtroom to World War II battlefield, Turow further distinguishes himself from other lawyers turned bestselling authors with his most ambitious novel to date. Readers will recognize narrator Stewart Dubinsky from Presumed Innocent (1987) and The Laws of Our Fathers (1996). Now a retired journalist coming to terms with his own failed marriage, he discovers a number of letters from his late father that suggest dark secrets at the heart of the family's history. It seems that during the war, Stewart's father had been engaged to another woman (to whom the letters are addressed), that he had been court-martialed and imprisoned for assisting a potential spy's escape and that Stewart's mother and father had kept the truth from their children. Always a dogged reporter, Stewart pursues the story, despite warnings that he might be devastated by what he learns. Revelation comes more quickly than Stewart anticipates, through his father's memoir of his war years, a manuscript entrusted to the lawyer who defended him. That manuscript (which subsequently provides the majority of Turow's narrative) describes the transformation of a young idealist, one who finds his innocence shattered by his initiation into combat and involvement in an unlikely romantic triangle. He had been ordered to arrest an OSS officer named Robert Martin, a maverick whose fellow soldiers insist is a brave patriot but whose commanding officer believes is a communist sympathizer. His mission enmeshes him with the inscrutable Gita Lodz, who may or may not be Martin's lover, and who will stop at nothing to advance their cause (whatever that cause may be). While some of the writing succumbs towar-is-hell cliche and there are passages of sentimental dialogue that suggest flashbacks from 1940s battle movies, the story of shifting allegiances, divided loyalties, compromised principles and primal instincts is as engrossing as any of Turow's legal thrillers. Without diminishing his page-turning narrative momentum, Turow extends his literary range.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169378375
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	11/01/2005
Edition description:	Unabridged

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