Invasion by Walter Dean Myers (review)

In this prequel to Fallen Angels (BCCB 4/88), Myers follows narrator Josiah “Woody” Wedgewood as his Army unit prepares to storm Omaha Beach in June of 1944. On hiatus from college to “do his duty,” Woody is an acquaintance of Marcus Perry from his hometown of Bedford, Virginia, but although their paths cross in Normandy, skin color dictates their disparate views of the action. Perry, whose son and nephew will figure in Myers’s later chronological novels, is black and relegated to transport services; Woody is white and is flung headlong into the crossfire, scrambling inland from the beach landing, fighting for position across dense hedgerows and open fields, and ultimately helping to take the coveted town of St. Lo, which has been effectively demolished by the time they stake their claim. Again, Myers undertakes the onerous challenge of putting “a face on war that reveals its horrors, but in a way that doesn’t repulse the reader,” as he states in his informative but heartfelt author’s note. He ably conveys Woody’s distorted sense of time and territory and how little land the Allied forces actually gain over weeks of brutal battle, and he balances the action scenes with quieter moments of equal power, such as when Woody takes part in prisoner interrogations that reveal an enemy as terrified and confused about the value of the mission as he is himself. Certainly established fans of Fallen Angels (BCCB 4/88) and Sunrise over Fallujah (BCCB 5/08) will scoop up this latest title, but a new generation of YA readers can now begin their six-decade march from Europe to the Middle East and ponder how little has changed.