Jump into the Sky (review)

After his semi-literate mother abandoned him as a baby on the seat of the car with a note saying, "I AM LEVIN," "leaving" morphed into Levi Battle's very name. It has also become the theme of his life: first his mother takes off, then his father leaves him in the keeping of an aunt while he joins the Army to fight in World War II, and now Aunt Odella has decided she's shouldered enough parental responsibility and sends thirteen-year-old Levi off to rejoin his father at his posting. Second Lt. Charles Battle has kept in touch, boasting about an assignment that seems so resplendent and unlikely—he claims to have become a colored paratrooper, despite the army's segregation—that friends and relatives are hesitant to believe his yarn. Yet, when Levi arrives after a hellish train ride from Chicago into the Jim Crow South, he finds that his father is indeed the paratrooper he claims to be but has just been reassigned and shipped out the day before to parts unknown. Calvin Thomas, a young black paratrooper, offers Levi a place to stay with him and his pregnant wife until they can track down Lt. Battle, and when Calvin gets his orders to rejoin his unit in Oregon, Levi accompanies the Thomases west, where he's reunited with his father. There's plenty of angry rumbling and discord among the paratroopers, though, who expected to be deployed into battle but instead find themselves fighting forest fires as they "guard" the west coast against rumored attack by Japanese bomb-carrying balloons, an idea that sounds so preposterous that the soldiers believe they've been sidetracked for the duration. Pearsall offers an exquisitely balanced tale of family ties and World War II valor, based on the experiences of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion. Levi's voice—humorous and acutely insightful—perfectly captures the viewpoint of a resilient young man whose feet sting from his first harsh landing in the adult world. Fans of Christopher Paul Curtis will fall right into line.