Louisa June and the Nazis in the Waves — Review

Thought for the Day:

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
~ Albert Camus ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

Liza Nash Taylor at Writer Unboxed has a great post HERE with some suggestions for getting help with revisions. Don’t miss this one.

Funny is good, but it is also hard. Anytime I find an article that will help with adding humor, I pay attention. Kathy Flynn has a great article HERE on Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association about adding humor. It’s not just for SF and Fantasy writers.

Ashley Taylor Clark has a good article HERE on Authors Publish with 3 Things Your Opening Scenes Should Achieve.

It has been a quiet week here. The heat is gone, we are having some lovely autumnal weather, and I am back to walking every morning — building strength and getting better every day, so I don’t have anything imperative to write about. I have been saving some English teacher jokes for just such a day. Enjoy.

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs, and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
• A question mark walks into a bar?
• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”
• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
• A synonym strolls into a tavern.
• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

I read about Louisa June and the Nazis in the Waves by L. M. Elliott on another blog. I think it was Greg Pattridge’s. I love books that focus on little-known happenings in history. I decided I needed to read it, and kept my eye open for it. When it came up for review with the Seattle Book Review, I grabbed it. There isn’t much I like better than good historic fiction, and this is a really good one. Here is the review I wrote for SBR.

Louisa June and her family live on the shores of Virginia, a place that has always meant eel fishing, skulling their boat, and watching the swans. But days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the family has much to worry about. Her dad, a tugboat captain, and her brothers, who are seamen, are facing the threat of German U-boats attacking ships off the coast. Louisa June’s mother has battled melancholia all her life and needs Louisa June to brighten her days. But when a terrible tragedy befalls the family, things become really hard for everyone. Louisa June must call on her friend Emmett and Cousin Belle to help get things back on an even keel for the family.

L.M. Elliott has written a stunning story that will teach young readers (and others lucky enough to find this book) about a little-known chapter of our history. Elliott’s impeccable research of the history, setting, and more bring this story to life and will immerse readers in the time and place. The writing is superb, the dialogue is completely believable, the characters are rich and complex, and the story is very, very compelling. This book is not to be missed.

Please don’t forget to check for other Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday posts at Greg Pattridge’s blog HERE.