2nd Quarter Outside Reading Book Review
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers Scholastics Inc. 1988
Genre: Historical Fiction
Fallen Angels is a historical fiction book based on a young man who is shipped over seas to the Vietnam War in 1967. His name is Richard Perry. He left his mother and younger brother behind in the United States after enlisting in the U.S. Army. On his way to Vietnam he meets another young man about his aged named Peewee. Perry and Peewee become good friends when they are assigned to the same unit. Through the course of the war Perry, Peewee, and the rest of their squad learn the horrors of war first hand. They grow closer after the lives of squad mates are lost in the fighting. The squad becomes brothers in arms protecting each other and having each other’s back.
“This gut-twisting Vietnam War novel . . . breaks uncharted Ground.” – Booklist, starred review
Compared to other war novels I have read, this is one of the best. It brings you into the characters eyes of a young man trying to survive on the battlefield. As you read this book you can understand Perry’s hardships. You learn about each of the characters and what there lives were like before they came to Vietnam. You realize what these soldiers went through during battle and how they felt about it afterwards. You go into the mind of Perry and learn his feelings and thoughts. You experience what happens to him as he does, you see through his eyes the Vietnam War.
“What had happened? The squad had been in a firefight, and we had almost been overrun. For the first time since I reached Nam we had been in the Middle of it, Turner had been killed. And not by some faceless enemy, some random shot from far away, but by an enemy I could see and hear.”(167)
