I'll Be Seeing You
(2017)(The first book in the Code Talker Chronicles series)
A novel by Eileen Charbonneau
Luke Kayenta and his childhood friend Nantai Riggs are young shepherds of the Navajo reservation in Arizona. They volunteer for an experiment: to come up with an uncrackable code based on their language to be used by the US as it enters World War II. They fly into New York to join the spy agency the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). While on the airfield, Luke catches sight of a young woman. He is first enchanted, then heartsick when he finds that Kitty Charante is the devoted wife of his Canadian RAF pilot and instructor in espionage. Their paths will cross again.
In the mountains between Spain and Nazi-occupied France, Luke and Nantai practice the code between radio stations while helping on Allied missions.
But off the coast, German SS agent Helmut Adler is celebrating his latest U-Boat conquest when he hears something crackling over the radio lines. When a young soldier of World War I, an American Indian language helped bring down his regiment in the Battle of Meuse-Argonne. Adler swears it will not happen again in this war. He sets his sights on the code talkers.
The hunt has begun.
Editorial Reviews
"... a compelling tale of clashing cultures, religions, and classes... " - - Library Journal
"The strength of this novel is in its vivid characterizations."
- Washington Post Book Word
"The reader will be fascinated by the tale of love and sacrifice, but will also be learning a wealth of history... " - The Literary Times
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Many Worlds of Eileen Charbonneau
ByRobert Crooke--author of The Chastened Hearton August 21, 2017
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
What you come to expect in the fiction of Eileen Charbonneau is the meeting of different worlds....Her latest novel, I'll Be Seeing You, brings many different worlds together in the dramatic context of the global conflagration of World War II. It is a story of allies who are frequently alien to one another, and, of enemies who must find some way to understand each other, learn each other's language, predict each other's thinking, if only to survive.
I'll Be Seeing You unfolds largely from the perspective of the famous Navajo "code-talkers" and their dualistic conception of a spirit world and an earth world that are merged, yet, distinct. This happens to be an apt perspective from which to consider the conflicting realities of World War II as we follow the "spirit journey" of a particular code-talker who learns to hear his own voice.
Because Eileen Charbonneau is such a good storyteller, her Navajo code-talker's journey is distinctly visual, each patently cinematic scene further unspooling a complex montage of soldiers, spies, diplomats, lovers and femmes fatales among a large cast of characters that includes American intelligence operatives, French Canadian resistance fighters, Spanish priests, German military and naval officers, Scottish farmers and Jewish families from New York.
There are moments throughout I'll Be Seeing You in which a reader might think fondly of the dramatic films made about World War II during the contemporaneous golden age of Hollywood - except, this would not be the kind of film easily made at that time because if its charmingly unfussy eroticism, its joyful embrace of universal humanity beneath superficial differences, and its uniquely unsentimental, Native-American perspective.
If you enjoy the suspense, heroic characterizations and Navajo traditions of the Anne and Tony Hillerman mysteries, give Eileen Charbonneau's Code Talker Chronicles a try!
Genre: Thriller
In the mountains between Spain and Nazi-occupied France, Luke and Nantai practice the code between radio stations while helping on Allied missions.
But off the coast, German SS agent Helmut Adler is celebrating his latest U-Boat conquest when he hears something crackling over the radio lines. When a young soldier of World War I, an American Indian language helped bring down his regiment in the Battle of Meuse-Argonne. Adler swears it will not happen again in this war. He sets his sights on the code talkers.
The hunt has begun.
Editorial Reviews
"... a compelling tale of clashing cultures, religions, and classes... " - - Library Journal
"The strength of this novel is in its vivid characterizations."
- Washington Post Book Word
"The reader will be fascinated by the tale of love and sacrifice, but will also be learning a wealth of history... " - The Literary Times
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Many Worlds of Eileen Charbonneau
ByRobert Crooke--author of The Chastened Hearton August 21, 2017
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
What you come to expect in the fiction of Eileen Charbonneau is the meeting of different worlds....Her latest novel, I'll Be Seeing You, brings many different worlds together in the dramatic context of the global conflagration of World War II. It is a story of allies who are frequently alien to one another, and, of enemies who must find some way to understand each other, learn each other's language, predict each other's thinking, if only to survive.
I'll Be Seeing You unfolds largely from the perspective of the famous Navajo "code-talkers" and their dualistic conception of a spirit world and an earth world that are merged, yet, distinct. This happens to be an apt perspective from which to consider the conflicting realities of World War II as we follow the "spirit journey" of a particular code-talker who learns to hear his own voice.
Because Eileen Charbonneau is such a good storyteller, her Navajo code-talker's journey is distinctly visual, each patently cinematic scene further unspooling a complex montage of soldiers, spies, diplomats, lovers and femmes fatales among a large cast of characters that includes American intelligence operatives, French Canadian resistance fighters, Spanish priests, German military and naval officers, Scottish farmers and Jewish families from New York.
There are moments throughout I'll Be Seeing You in which a reader might think fondly of the dramatic films made about World War II during the contemporaneous golden age of Hollywood - except, this would not be the kind of film easily made at that time because if its charmingly unfussy eroticism, its joyful embrace of universal humanity beneath superficial differences, and its uniquely unsentimental, Native-American perspective.
If you enjoy the suspense, heroic characterizations and Navajo traditions of the Anne and Tony Hillerman mysteries, give Eileen Charbonneau's Code Talker Chronicles a try!
Genre: Thriller
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