Her works as a writer include the collection of Micronesian myths, “From the Mouth of the Monster Eel,” and “Pacific Island Legends,” which she co-authored with my friend Dr. Beret E. Strong and Nancy’s husband, Dr. Bill Flood, everyone’s favorite pediatrician who used to write a weekly column for the Variety on health matters. Dr. Bill, as some of you may recall, was among the NMI residents who joined Micronesian grand master navigator Mau Piailug in an epic sea journey from Satawal and Polowat to Saipan in the spring of 2000. The Floods now live on the Navajo Nation Reservation, near Flagstaff, Arizona.
“Warriors in the Crossfire” is the title of Dr. Nancy’s latest opus. Published by Boyds Mills Press in Pennsylvania, the 142-page novel is primarily for “young adults,” according to Amazon.com. But this is quite inaccurate.
Everyone, young or old, can enjoy this graceful work of fiction.
It’s a coming-of-age story about two island boys in their early teens: the Carolinian Joseph (shouldn’t this be Jose?) and his cousin Kento, who is half-Japanese. The most cataclysmic event in the island’s history — the American invasion of Saipan — is about to happen and our two heroes are already testing their hunting skills so they can help their families survive the chaos that war will bring to their lives. The son of a Carolinian chief, Joseph is an “island warrior,” like his father, whose primary duty is to protect his family. It is his father who teaches him how to hunt for turtles, to find fish and fresh water, and now Joe is sharing these lessons with Kento.
Joseph’s father sounds like Mr. Miyagi in “Karate Kid” or Master Fo in “Kung Fu”: “Face your fear; sail through it,” says Joe’s old man. “Courage sometimes means to wait.” And although the boys style themselves as warriors, it is with their own frailty and inexperience that they have to struggle.
This is a book that is deeply respectful of Japanese culture, but the author didn’t sugarcoat the Apartheid-like features of the Japanese occupation of the NMI. Like all fine writers, moreover, Dr. Nancy has an ear for good rhythm, and she writes simply but elegantly:
“I wandered the edges of our village. The air stilled. The day cooled. The sun paused on the horizon’s rim, blazed gold, then slipped out of sight.”
Reading Dr. Nancy’s description of island scenery, the lagoon and the marine life, made me realize how Saipan is refreshingly beautiful, even in words.
Here’s another favorite passage of mine:
“The Japanese sat in straight-row chairs, the men in starched white shirts and long white pants, the women in pale flowing dresses and sun hats, parasols perched above like colorful blossoms hiding their faces. They stayed distant and separate from us, but to each other they smiled, bowing and chirping like sparrows fussing over seeds.”
Dr. Nancy writes with the deftness of an impressionist painter’s brush. The way she narrated how the young warriors hunted for a turtle which ended in a close encounter with a shark was compelling. Reading the passages describing the cave where Joe’s family hid as the Battle of Saipan raged on, you can feel the damp, rocky floor, the shaking of the earth, the heat, the utter helplessness of ordinary people caught in the crossfire of history.
“The sky glowed after each explosion. Orange. Red. Burning. All around me the world was burning. My father was dead.
“Night gave way to dawn. A dawn stinking of war, trembling with war.”
I spotted one unfortunate typo — Bonsai, instead of Banzai, Cliff — and I think that a third-person narrative mode would have made this novel more convincing. I also find the title too prosaic, too literal for a work that often verges on the poetic.
But my nit-picking cannot diminish the merits of this admirable book. You must read it.
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