The Sojourners: Life on the American Homefront During World War II

By R. Allen Pender

The United States was just beginning to emerge from the Great Depression of 1930s when war began to rage in Europe. The United States at this time was not an active participant in the war. However,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 075968913X
• ISBN13: 9780759689138
• Release Date: March 2002
• Publisher: 1st Book Library
• Length: 452 Pages
• Weight: 1.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A New American Favorite

When people who love to read have a 'favorite' book, often it's not a matter of discovering what happens, but how the author takes us deftly and pleasantly to another place, another time, even another world. I've read every Sherlock Holmes case a dozen times and I know passages of The Chronicles of Narnia by heart. But, when I get an hour to tuck up in my bed and read, these are places I want to go again and again. That explains why, after I read the last line of page 442 of The Sojourners, I simply turned back and began again on page one. Mr. Pender takes us to the good old USA. This is a story within a story. A young man we could almost call 'everyboy' comes of age during that grisly period of history when America herself comes to her hard-won but noble maturity. The depth and poignancy of this memoir are subtle but irresistible. The style is deceptively simple, seemingly casual. It's not so much like reading about this young fellow's life, as it is like living it. I chuckled, I laughed out loud, and I cried, sometimes all on the same page. The first and last chapters of the book set the entire piece so gently in its frame that I expect some folks will miss it. Looking back, the author shares with his old friend that his own realization of a benevolent God has given him the answer to the meaning of that life he has lived. Read this book and you'll understand what it's like to have the heart of a young scallywag... and the spirit of an American.

On Air review by radio interviewer Jan. 25,2003,

" This book has it all. I have read over 3000 or 4000 books and the unique style of writing, with flashbacks, never abandons the reader,but instead awakens the reader's senses to the sounds and smells of the era.The verbal descriptions of the scenes and people are so real you feel that you are there. A Great Book"Bob Latorre, WOBM, 1160 AM

...

great book. The author's escapades and the book's bittersweet theme are those to which every former boy and girl can relate. We loved it, and we know our parents and son will, too. We read it on our way from and to work. It made a normally long and annoying commute fly by. We were so sorry when we ran out of chapters. We need a sequel!

The Sojourners, not just a journey into the past.

This book is a delightful "time travel" into the World War II era, as seen from the perspective of a North Carolina boy transplanted to New Jersey because of the war economy. It reminds me of novels like "The Waltons", but with more humor, and "Little House on the Prairie",with a broader and more diverse spectrum of subject matter. It is written with a Mark Twain-like wit which is melded with the bitter-sweet reality of the human experiance, and is both historically and emotionally more profound than either, in my opinion, as it chronicles the family life of 1940's America,with the underscoring of the very real fears and apprehensions of invasion that then ominously pervaded the U.S., and especially its coastal cities. No other work with I am familiar brings to the reader the combination of the era's simpler, more human relationships of family and friends, coupled with an enlightening and relevant picture of the threats and uncertainties of war " on the homefront". This has a meaning and significance that the Author could not have anticipated while composing the work -- the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and the continuing threats of terrorism. The resulting sorrows, fears and anger of every contemporary American are historically mirrored in the pages of this book . To that extent it brings a sense of perspective to the reader, not just as a historical novel would in ordinary times, but, at least to this reader, a theraputic reality check into what, in life, is of value and what is not. I highly recommend this book to everyone, as it brings warmth and humor, understanding --and therapy!