Radar Girls (Ackerman)-Blog Tour-Historical Fiction-Available Now

I picked this book up for a few reasons.

1) I like historical fiction.

2) I like new perspectives in historical fiction – learning about known events from a different point of view.

3) I have a soft spot and many fond memories of Hawaii.

One of my strongest memories of my first visit to Hawaii actually involves the memorial at Pearl Harbor, and it’s a place that I always associate with WWII. This made the book even more interesting to me.

The WARD (Women’s Air Raid Defense) program was vital to the War in the Pacific and the author certainly did her research to fully explain the jobs the women were tasked with. This was one of the strongest areas of the narrative. The historical parts were fascinating.

The author also did a nice job with the descriptions of the different women who joined the WARD program. The islands were rife with distrust (for good reason) and it is not unrealistic to believe that the women didn’t always get along, but understood the importance of being able to rely on each other.

I thought that the author captured “old Hawaii” in a very authentic manner. The words were correct (at least from my memory and the few that I looked up). That’s important because I remember how my friends’ grandparents stressed using Hawaiian as much as possible, so it didn’t get lost among new generations.

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I realize I kind of skipped a beat there, but the Hawaiian language has always been magical to me. The words and phrases I learned still resonate in my head often. The same could be said with the locations.

That’s another area where the author did her homework. I could easily picture the different places where the action took place – even though some of the areas have become much more commercial and developed since the 1940s, the relation to each other remains clear.

Less successful in the book were smaller subplots about a horse that went missing the day Pearl Harbor was bombed and some of Daisy’s other personal issues (like with her dad). While they weren’t awful, I thought they were unnecessarily distracting from the main story at hand.

Especially the horse. Pretty sure there were more important things to worry about at the time. But I do understand the importance of a touchstone, as that’s what its purpose seemed to be.

There were also places where the writing didn’t exactly feel polished. I felt that this author’s Red Sky Over Hawaii was slightly more…advanced? That’s not exactly the correct word. Maybe the story in the previous one flowed better?

That’s not to say that this one was bad in any way. In fact, reading both of them will certainly give the reader an excellent feel for World War II Hawaii. It’s a place that was pivotal in U.S. involvement but is often overlooked beyond the one fateful day.

I’m thankful that there are authors like this who work to keep history alive.

Facebook: @ackermanbooks
Twitter: @AckermanBooks
Instagram: @saraackermanbooks

About the author: USA Today bestselling author Sara Ackerman was born and raised in Hawaii. She studied journalism and earned graduate degrees in psychology and Chinese medicine. She blames Hawaii for her addiction to writing, and sees no end to its untapped stories. When she’s not writing or teaching, you’ll find her in the mountains or in the ocean. She currently lives on the Big Island with her boyfriend and a houseful of bossy animals.

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