Into the Killing Seas by Michael P. Spradlin (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Into the Killing Seas by Michael P. Spradlin
Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-545-72602-3 $16.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-545-72603-0 $16.99
Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 4-7
Patrick and his younger brother, Teddy, have been separated from their parents ever [End Page 56] since the Japanese invasion of the Philippines; the boys were evacuated to Guam, but over three years have passed with no word of the parents’ whereabouts. Now in July of 1945 the boys seize the opportunity to stow away on a ship headed toward the Philippines—the USS Indianapolis. Readers drawn by the cover art will know sharks are involved, but many who have not yet studied World War II may not realize that this is based on a military tragedy involving the most vicious shark attack in history, which Patrick and Teddy end up in the middle of (and eventually, as Patrick’s retrospective narrative indicates, survive it). The boys’ backstory, rapidly dispatched in a single chapter, is barely plausible, but it functions mainly as a device to put the pair on a raft in shark-infested waters, and the historical event—with its grisly death count—enhances the you-are-there thrills. If warding off sharks and desperate survivors with a stick and nail from the disintegrating raft isn’t dramatic enough, Spradlin adds a couple of further twists. Teddy has become an elective mute prone to hysterical outbursts since being separated from his parents, and their raftmate, Benny, a Marine who has buoyed Patrick’s spirits throughout the ordeal, is not who he seems. An appended interview with the author fills in some historical background, but even if readers don’t come away with in-depth knowledge of the war in the Philippines, they will definitely remember the Indy.
