THE WIND IS NOT A RIVER by Brian Payton

Note: I am not a paid reviewer, and I have purchased this title to read for my personal enjoyment.

John is a Canadian-born reporter living in Seattle with his wife Helen during World War 2. Driven partly by a guilty urge to do his part following his brother’s war death, and partly by his journalistic indignation over the U.S. Government’s censorship of the Japanese conquest of the most-westward Aleutian Islands, John sneaks his way onto a bombing mission over Japanese-occupied Attu. His plane is shot down, but he survives by hiding from the occupiers while scratching out a primitive existence in extreme conditions. Overcoming John’s disregard for her wishes when he chased his story to Alaska, Helen undertakes a noble search to learn his fate and bring him home. With the narrative shifting between Attu and Helen’s journey, the prose deftly guides us through the decline of John’s acuity: recognition of his plight, despair, solitude-mollifying remembrances of pleasures and regrets, desperation, delusions, capitulation. Mr. Payton enviably has found a largely unknown historical nugget and crafted a tale that seems in perfect sync with the bleak setting and human tragedy of his squelched military subject.