Hold Strong by Robert Dugoni

 

My thoughts

I received an arc from Brilliance Audio along with an ebook from Lake Union. The narrator was spectacular. He brought the emotions out in this story. Made you feel all of the characters laughs and tears. The pain. The sadness. And the love between the main two characters. It was narratorated to perfection. 

This is my second book by Robert Dugoni. The first being Sam Hell. This book is another great one. But a very emotional story. It's fiction based on actual events. Events that I have never read before. I've read only a couple of books based on the Japanese during WWll but none like this one. None where you see what happened to POWs held by these very cruel and heartless people. The Japanese soldiers were some of the most cruel and horrible I've read and this one no different. Such horrors. I'll never understand how anyone can have so much hate in them. Or inflict such pain on helpless human beings.

This is a story of two young people who fell in love while still in high school. Both looking forward to spending the rest of their lives together. Both wanting to go to college and make a life. But the war had other plans. Sam joined the National Guard hoping to do something useful and be able to afford college. Sarah received a scholarship to college. During Sam's time in the National Guard he and fellow guardsmen had to serve their country full time. The world was at war. Pearl Harbor had been bombed. These young men were terrified but also ready to do their part. 

When the unit that Sam served in was captured and they became POWs in the Philippines. Sarah decided she could not sit still and do nothing. Her and other women had been offered a place in Washington to break the codes the Japanese were sending. Sarah was very good at code breaking. She had no idea how much this would affect Sam and the other men held captive aboard a Japanese ship. 

You get a very in depth feel for what the men in this POW camp endured. What happened while aboard the Arisan Maru will make you cry. Weep. Cringe. It was horrible and so hard to read about. What happened next was even harder. What the US did was awful in my opinion. Yes I understand that it was part of war and may have saved lives. May have brought about the end to this horrible war, but it was still awful and so sad. 

Will Sam and Sarah be able to come together. Marry and be happy. Or will the things that happened be more than either can live with. As with most historical books this one made it so real. Made me shed so many tears. Made me angry. I rooted for the love story to find a happy ending. Whether it does or not you will have to find out for yourself. 

There is a lot at the end of this book about the events that happened. The actual events. While it's fiction, it is strongly based on events that really happened. About a time in history that was beyond horrible.

Thank you #NetGalley, #LakeUnion, #BrillianceAudio, for this ARC. 

Five big stars.

About

From Robert Dugoni, Jeff Langholz, and Chris Crabtree comes an epic and inspiring novel—based on true events—about love, heroism, and resilience during the darkest chapters of World War II.

Sam Carlson is a projectionist in small-town Minnesota, where fantasies unspool in glorious black and white—for him and for his sweetheart, college-bound math whiz Sarah Haber. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Sam is sent to the Philippines and captured as a POW. Brutalized but unbroken by the Bataan Death March and POW camps, Sam is one of 1,800 starved and weakened prisoners herded into the cargo hold of a barbaric hell ship called the Arisan Maru, his survival doubtful.

Determined to use her math skills on the home front, Sarah is recruited to Washington, DC, into the covert field of code breaking. When Sarah intercepts a message about a Japanese convoy, the US Navy’s mission is sink the Arisan Maru and send it to the bottom of the South China Sea. Now, the lives of the two young lovers are about to inadvertently collide in one of the most shocking acts of World War II.

Anchored in an extraordinary true story and breathlessly recreated, Hold Strong is a one-of-a-kind novel that explores faith, courage, survival, and coming home against insurmountable odds.