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 Review #4853463 |
 | Chapter 1 Redemption for the Rising Sun  [E] The first chapter of my faith-based whodunit - still a work in progress  |
| (4.0)| Hello, Lillian . This is a review of "Chapter 1 Redemption for the Rising Sun" by suggestion from Amethyst Snow Angel  from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group" !  I have the following comments to offer. Reader ExperienceSet in the fifties, just after the war with Japan, in the deep Southern state of South Carolina. This story starts with lunch on the terrace with a PI called Phillip Gamon and his wife Anna, Keiko Carpenter, a Japanese wife to a Marine at the local Camp Beauregard Marine Corps Base. Anna's Italian and follows a long line of excellent cooks on her mothers side. Keiko seems to be hiding mysteries behind long sleeves and dark glasses. Commentary: Content, Characters and PlotThis is a fascinating journey back in time to the fifties where the racist prejudice against Japanese people was still alive and well in a military culture still reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor that started WW2. Phillip and Anna are painted as the good guys here with Anna in the driving street from the character perspective. Born Anna Rosa Ophelia Maria Cecilia Elisabetta Mattalagni Anna sounds like she came from one of those big Italian families that try and remember all their key relatives in the naming of their daughter. With the looks of Sophia Loren and the culinary and entertaining skills of an Italian Mama Mia she seems like the perfect fifties housewife. The discontinuity with her Catholic past is in her Born again experience which integrates her into the church culture of the Baptist Bible Belt. It is this faith that allows her to see the person behind the stereotype that everyone else has placed on Keiko. She seems to have acquired her husbands curiosity and observational skills - or was that the reason she married him in the first place, so she could share in his mission? Her husband Phillip is a Private Investigator with a mission to help those who have no voice. Tutored by the big city he now has his own practice in the local town where he aims to serve. Since the incomes of such people were mainly based on who was cheating on whom in that era the mystery of Keiko must have been a welcome distraction and more in tune with his heart felt goals. A decade in the big city would take him back to the war in which he presumably served as a conscript giving him a connection with the military culture of the Marine base along with having been born in the town. His skill set might place him with the Military Police which would help on the Marine base if true. The conscription period was the war plus six months so maybe he could only have been in the big city nine years rather than ten and that assumes he has only just arrived in South Carolina Smallville which does not fit the story line, so eight years seems more realistic. Tiny doll like Keiko is painted as the victim in this piece. She inherits the racist prejudice of her people in a context that has good reason to remember the bad stuff the Japanese Empire did. She appears to be married to an abusive Marin Sergeant, Gary Carpenter, but is careful to conceal her bruises. She only opens up when Gary is not around indicating a terror not to offend an insecure control freak of a husband. Japanese culture has taught her to worship her man. Okinawans are not regarded as pure Japanese by Japanese people themselves. It was a separate kingdom with its own identity for much of its history, the Ryukyu Kingdom. So I wonder if Keiko is actually no stranger to racial prejudice and may have experienced it even from the military of the Japanese Empire also. Her husband Gary may be one of those soldiers who has seen too much war, spilt too much blood and allowed the darkness to swallow his soul. There does not seem to be any love in the man. His story might be interesting or might read like a litany of poor excuses that a better man than himself would have handled better. This seems like a credible enough scenario. You communicated the arrogance and isolationism of American fifties culture very well. This resonates very well with Trumps USA today. If you are writing for that audience I guess this will not matter to you, but somehow I think this book is about challenging prejudice rather than reinforcing it. My impression is that Americans always underestimate the little guy, the poor man and the underdog. This is probably why it is usually these people that catch them out - Pearl Harbor, Vietnam, 911, Putin. I guess the title implies that Keiko is going to get saved by Anna and Phillip. The story is therefore about how that happens. Mechanical issuesYou are partly telling this story from the perspective of Anna and partly narrating it. Other reviewers will tell you to adopt a more show rather than tell approach to this. So you could rewrite the chapter from the perspective of Anna looking around at the others, remembering the back story and saying what she can see. This draws the reader in more effectively that simply telling them what is going on. Make them feel it and see it, basically. So take this sentence: Anna was a tall woman who reveled in feeding others - The two parts of the sentence are not related and you have skipped from Anna's POV to the God view and narrated a description of Anna. Later you describe the husband: Anna Rosa Gamon was almost as tall as Phillip, with long brown curly hair that danced about her shoulders in the warm spring breeze So a show rather than tell approach might rewrite this something like this: Anna Rosa Gamon looked up at her husband who was a head taller than most men. She was the tall girl at school that intimidated the shorter boys but with Phillip she could look up and feel truly feminine. She loved the way he would comment on the long brown curly hair that danced about her shoulders in the warm spring breeze. He brought out the woman in her and evoked a gratitude and love that lit up the heavens when she stared into his eyes. You need to watch your tenses. You have paragraphs with mixed tenses. Spelling mistake: Hiss attention focused on a cookie Thanks for sharing.
"WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"  My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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