The Wind Is Not a River

On June 3, 1942, just three days before Easley was scheduled to head for home, the Japanese launched a strike from light carriers and bombed Dutch Harbor Naval Base and Fort Mears Army Base, killing forty-three men, incinerating ships and buildings. These outposts on Unalaska and Amaknak islands, near the Alaskan mainland, were the only U.S. defenses in the Aleutian Archipelago. June 7 saw the U.S. victory at Midway. That same day, six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Americans learned that the Japanese Army had seized the islands of Kiska and Attu at the far end of the Aleutian Chain. Eleven days later, the U.S. Navy made a brief statement to the press downplaying events.

This "forgotten event", the scene of the only battle during WWII fought on American soil, is a fascinating jumping off point for a novel -- not only was it fought on American soil, but the Americans lost territory. It's amazing to me that this isn't common knowledge, that this battle isn't commemorated alongside the Battle of Midway and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But the politics of downplaying battle losses aside, the promise of the intriguing setup is never fully realised.

In The Wind Is Not a River, John Easley is a Canadian journalist who, after his brother is shot down over the English Channel, feels guilt over his own rejection by the Canadian Armed Forces and decides to aid the war effort by (fraudulently) returning to the Aleutian Islands and reporting on the little-publicised battles there. In the opening scene of the book, Easley gains consciousness and realises that his own plane had been shot down, leaving him exposed on an island occupied by the Japanese army. He soon joins up with a young American soldier who has also survived the crash and together they begin an arduous and tense battle for survival.

Meanwhile, his American wife, Helen, is taking care of her father in her Seattle childhood home after he has a stroke. The longer John is incommunicado, the more Helen believes that something is wrong, and eventually, she joins the USO just to be sent up to the Aleutian Islands to find word of her missing husband.

Part adventure tale and part love story, The Wind Is Not a River is told from the shifting points of view of John and Helen. And as promising as the premise was, it came off a bit clunky for me.

I couldn't help but read The Wind Is Not a River as a Canadian first (since that's what I am…) and Brian Payton's viewpoint seems strangely conflicted. Born in California and settled in B.C. by age 16, the author seemed to be trying to work out which country he identifies with more. When John's Canadian mother comes to visit, Helen's Dad feels uncomfortable, her love of tea "has become for him an indictment against Canadians in general, a people he finds 'neither here, nor there…neither us, nor them'."  What a curious statement for an author with Payton's background to make -- as a Canadian, I certainly don't feel neither here nor there (and how could we not be "them" when we are not "us"?).  Also curious was the observation that the young soldier, Karl, was a better shot at killing birds with stones baseball-style: "The boy had superior accuracy, owing to his American childhood. Easley grew up playing hockey, a sport with no obvious correlation to hunting, unless the quarry were dark mice scurrying across a frozen pond." Every Canadian kid I know grew up playing baseball in the summer and having snowball fights in the winter, keeping that throwing arm nice and limber -- it ain't all hockey and dogsleds.

In addition to these curiosities, the writing was a bit uneven.  A sample passage:

The fog slips like satin from the slopes of a dormant volcano, revealing a frigid beauty. All is laid bare in the bold relief of the rare Aleutian sun -- patches of white, tan husk of last year's grass, blood blue North Pacific.

As I read that, I first hesitated over fog slipping like satin, and while I begrudgingly accepted the simile, I came to a full stop at "blood blue North Pacific". I may be overly critical, but if I can't understand a metaphor (the ocean is the colour of my veins through my skin?) then it's just awkward. I also find it insulting to have a character explain something as universally known as the USO, as Helen does to her father -- could an American in 1943 not have actually known what the USO was and what it did? Could anyone reading the book today not know -- and if not, wouldn't it become obvious as Helen starts rehearsing the show and taking it on the road? That clumsy trick of having a character explain something to someone else just so the audience can understand what's going on is exactly why I can't watch CSI. 

The wind is not a river.

Her chain of islands that dares to separate the North Pacific from the Bering Sea. A chain through which the wind whips into some of the world's most fearsome storms. One minute it's a hurricane, the next a breeze. But rivers! Rivers flow through the seasons -- under bright summer sun, plates of winter ice -- morning, noon, and night. Wind rises up and fades away, but a river flows endlessly.

And our suffering? This too shall pass. The wind is not a river.

And as for believability -- here be spoilers! -- could Helen have actually joined the USO and be sent to the Aleutians within weeks? Would she really leave her disabled father alone to chase after her missing husband? And why write that she closes in on John, only to be sent back home when she's one island away from him? And why have John die three days after he gets home? And wasn't Karl's incest confession a little gratuitous?

All that aside, though, there were many things that did work for me in this book: John's degeneration as he tried to stay alive was believable and tense. The real history was deftly inserted -- and besides the battles and the politics, the forced evacuation of the Aleuts (who were interred in an abandoned canning factory on mainland Alaska for the duration of the war) was a fascinating aspect of the story -- and for the introduction to this forgotten time, this was a worthwhile read.

This is the second book that I read for the National Post's Afterword Reading Society, and for the second time, it felt like a lightweight choice that was kind of a waste of my time. My survey:

The Wind Is Not A River

Rate this book with a score between 0 and 100: 70

I read The Wind Is Not A River in 2 sittings.

What was better: the beginning.

Sum up this book in a Tweet: During the only WWII battle waged on American soil, a woman tries to find her husband, a writer, who is clinging to life behind enemy lines.

If you like this book, you’ll like  Unbroken:A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption because it tells the true life story of an American soldier who survived a Japanese POW camp and it gives some insight into what might have been Easley's fate if he had successfully surrendered.

My favourite book set during the Second World War is The Naked and the Dead because it shatters the familiar heroic/adventure mythology by portraying war as dirty and hard and the American army as a reluctant grouping of flawed individuals. (It's fugging amazing.)

What’s a question you have for Brian Payton? When you travelled to the Aleutians, did you get the sense that the Aleuts actually think of themselves as Americans? Does it make much difference to them whether their islands are claimed by Russia or Japan or America?


Update: January 15/2014


I didn't find this to be a particularly important book, but the author did satisfactorily answer my question in the newspaper:

Krista asks When you travelled to the Aleutians, did you get the sense that the Aleuts actually think of themselves as Americans? Does it make much difference to them whether their islands are claimed by Russia or Japan or America?

Brian Payton answers Before and during the war, it is clear from the historical record that the Aleut people were patriotic Americans. They were also proud of both their native and Russian heritage. In my travels there, I found this continues to be true. In the lead-up to war, they distrusted the Japanese and believed that their islands would become targets of Japanese aggression. History proves them correct.