The Big War: On the Wings of Heroes by Richard Peck

Richard Peck's latest novel, On the Wings of Heroes, is a gem. Written about the oft-mined subject of the World War II home front, Peck's story is so vivid, so real, and so true to the emotional neighborhood of that time that it makes you feel that he has found a lost snapshot of America, dusted it off, and laid it before us to experience in all its intensity.

The novel begins in the last days before the war, when "it was always summer," a summer in which Davy Bowman's father and big brother ran with him as they played hide-and-seek with the neighbor kids, racing to tag up safely at home base as twilight faded. Soon the war came, and Davy's days were filled with the stuff of war--collecting rubber, and tinfoil, scrap metal and paper, and even milkweed fluff to fill Mae West vests for downed airmen, experiencing air raid drills and blackouts, keeping ration books and war bond stamps, and learning about the fear of loss as his hero, his big brother Bill, goes off to war to as a Flying Fortress bombardier.

In Peck's hands, the clouds of war only intensify the richness of life on the home front. The novel is written in chapters which each seem a complete short story, filled with humor and a depth of characterization which make the small town and countryside around seem like a whole world on its own. Although Davy's dad, a World War I veteran still scarred by that war, is the center of his universe, Davy and his friend Scooter soon move into a larger world, represented by the world map which Scooter marks with pushpins as their friends and family members go to fight in both theatres of the war.

When Bill earns his wings and goes off to fly missions over Europe, his B-17 is downed in the Channel, and Davy and his family wait in fear until he is saved by the French Resistance and returns, an almost mythical hero in Davy's mind. But as Peck builds the layers of his narrative, the reader comes to understand that all his characters are heroes--Davy's father, who knows his own sacrifice in the "Great War" failed to make the world safe for his sons, his mother, who fears for Bill but volunteers at the local blood bank, his overbearing Grandma who comes to support her daughter as she waits for news of her oldest son, his frail Grandpa who steps in to work at the family filling station, the terrifying Miss Titus who comes out of retirement because of the teacher shortage and teaches him more than he expects, anld even old Mr. Stonecypher who lost his only son in World War I and yet lives on to grieve the loss of other people's sons--all fight fear, sadness, and uncertainty with quiet courage and hope.

Peck captures a moment in history and in the life of the nation in a way which is truly funny and truly heroic, so completely there in its time and place, yet so true for all of our history. On the Wings of Heroes shows us a time, both like and unlike our own, a world seemingly balanced precariously in a cosmic struggle, but united in that cause in a way not known since. As we look for heroes in our own time, Peck give us clear-eyed vision of the courage and caring we seek.