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 fianc e, 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.
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A literary novel written by an author known primarily for his crime fiction.
Finally, a novel written by a lawyer that has heart and soul. And a narrator who isn’t a lawyer. Or at least one of them is not a lawyer. The protagonists in Ordinary Heroes are a father and a son. The son, who is the story’s narrator, Stewart, is a retired journalist. …
Turow is a terrific writer in the legal genre. He rises to new heights in this novel however. It’s a war story, a love story and a story of discovery. The protagonist is researching his father’s wartime experiences and he learns more about his father and ultimately about his mother than he ever expected. The battle scenes are horrific. One is left …
I listened to the audio CD, narrated by Edward Herman. I love his talent and voice, but at times I had trouble discerning who was speaking (David or Stuart) at the beginning of a chapter.
Lots of preaching and moralizing throughout, and in some of the “war” scenes, I mentally drifted off. It was too gruesome to stay focused.
Outstanding portrait of courage and strength of character.