Overview

Set in a small town south of San Francisco during World War II, Words of My Roaring is a compelling picture of the confusions, the dislocations, and the brutality of war as they affect the home front. The novel recreates a neighborhood in San Bruno and connects it to San Francisco and the larger stage of the war. Tanforan racetrack, first an assembly camp for Japanese Americans awaiting internment, becomes a naval training base for Pacific-bound recruits. The elementary school becomes a USO, and air-raid drills and blackouts are routine as California prepares for an expected Japanese invasion. We see these events through the eyes of a novice teacher, an abandoned boy, two young girls whose mother works in the shipyards and whose father enlists in the Army, and a sailor scarred by his months in the war zone. Words of My Roaring is a richly textured, emotionally charged novel about the unlikely sources of human redemption.

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9780520216389

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Reviews

Finney sets this tale of human tragedy and redemption against the backdrop of the larger events of WWII. . . . First person accounts detail his characters' everyday lives. . . . Quirky and flawed, these characters reveal the fragility and toughness of the human spirit. Sharply evocative of the time, this story of homefront America is a good read. -- Publishers Weekly

A sweeping old-fashioned novel that ambitiously explores an unfamiliar theme - life in wartime California - with sometimes too much corroborative detail. This time out, Finney (Winterchill, 1989; Birds Landing, 1986) describes the effects of war on a small town near San Francisco that becomes home to a naval-training base for Pacific-bound recruits, and a shipyard that attracts families seeking work - families like the Mitchams, who come all the way from Tennessee to join the rich mix of reluctant recruits, veteran sailors, and teachers from out of state. The story, told in the first person by a rotating succession of characters, covers the war years, with a final fast-forward to 1975 to provide a satisfying wrap-up. At the heart of the novel are Chuck Sweet, a Navy veteran, and Avery Fontana, a young boy, who, like characters in a William Golding novel, act as agents of grace evoking redeeming responses from the rest. Both are haunted by the past: Sweet's Hopi mother committed suicide, and more recently he himself not only survived the attack at Pearl Harbor but came through a further ordeal at sea. Avery, whose father is in prison for a murder that Avery witnessed, lives with an aged cousin. He befriends young Ruthie Mitcham, who will ultimately hold her family together as they survive the father's death, a brother's desertion, and their shipyard-worker mother's depression. Sweet, troubled by memories of his ordeals, fears going back to sea; he also fears falling in love with Avery's teacher, the pretty Elaine, who lives next door to the Mitchams. Lives intersect, and the war is a constant presence as rationing, air raid alarms, and troublemaking recruits dramatically affect life in the town. But happiness wins out - sort of. Finney has the period down pat - but, finally, the story falters amidst all its conflicting if admirable ambitions. Still, a readable tale of life at home during the Big One. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Ernest J. Finney grew up on the peninsula just south of San Francisco and now divides his time between that city and the San Joaquin Valley. His books include the novels California Time (1998), Lady with the Alligator Purse (1992) and Winterchill (1989), and the short story collections Flights in the Heavenlies (1996) and Birds Landing (1986).

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