Review #8

                            Citation: Myers, Walter Dean Fallen Angels                  Scholastic Inc. New York 1988      

                 Genre: Coming of age; Banned; Realistic/edgy

Annotation:Gritty, stark and told through the eyes of a 17 year old young man. Fallen Angels will take the romanticism out of war.

Justification for nomination:War can be summed up in the following words, "Hours of boredom, seconds of terror." (Page 123) Set in Vietnam, Fallen Angels is the story of 17 year old Richard Perry who joins the army after high school as a way out of Harlem. He's plenty smart enough for college, but his alcoholic mother and younger brother need his support. The army is a way to earn money and get three squares a day. Perry has no real idea of what war really is and he goes into it with romanticized view which is quickly destroyed. He is not prepared for watching his friends die, what it feels like to kill someone close up, the stench of burning flesh, and the heat, humidity and bugs. We hear the truth of war in Perry's 1st person narrative.

We meet Perry as he is shipping off to Vietnam.  He meets and befriends Peewee Gates who he bonds with during an experience filled with death, fear and confusion. Perry starts to wonder why they were even fighting in Vietnam and why he enlisted in the first place: for selfish reasons or selfless reasons. Perry, Peewee and their platoon Alpha spend their days either board or out on patrol looking for Vietcong. When their platoon leader Lieutenant Carroll dies they get Lieutenant Dongan, a racist leader who puts his Afro-American soldiers in the most dangerous positions. This is almost secondary due to the fear felt from the violence of the war. Perry watches as the lines between good and bad get blurred, friends die and he loses faith in his commanding officers.

Perry long to be home and spends a lot of time writing (or trying to write) letters home to his younger brother Kenny and his mother. When Perry is wounded for the second time along with Peewee, they are finally allowed to return to home.

Dedicated to his older brother who died in the Vietnam war, Fallen Angels gives the reader a realistic look at war, far different then the one presented in American movies. This is an anti-war book that gives the YA reader an emphasis on the value of friendship and couage.