Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Set against the magnificent backdrop of Alaska in the waning days of World War II,The Cloud Atlasis an enthralling debut novel, a story of adventure and awakening--and of a young soldier who came to Alaska on an extraordinary, top-secret mission…and found a world that would haunt him forever. Drifting through the night, whisper-quiet, they were the most sublime manifestations of a desperate enemy: Japanese balloon bombs. Made of rice paper, at once ingenious and deadly, they sailed thousands of miles across the Pacific...and once they started landing, the U.S. scrambled teams to find and defuse them, and then keep them secret from an already anxious public. Eighteen-year-old Louis Belk was one of those men. Dispatched to the Alaskan frontier, young Sergeant Belk was better trained in bomb disposal than in keeping secrets. And the mysteries surrounding his mission only increased when he met his superior officer--a brutal veteran OSS spy hunter who knew all too well what the balloons could do--and Lily, a Yup'ik Eskimo woman who claimed she could see the future. Louis's superior ushers him into a world of dark secrets; Lily introduces Louis to an equally disorienting world of spirits--and desire. But the world that finally tests them all is Alaska, whose vastness cloaks mysteries that only become more frightening as they unravel. Chasing after the ghostly floating weapons, Louis embarks upon an adventure that will lead him deep into the tundra. There, on the edge of the endless wilderness, he will make a discovery and a choice that will change the course of his life. At once a heart-quickening mystery and a unique love story,The Cloud Atlasis also a haunting, lyrical rendering of a little-known chapter in history. Brilliantly imagined, beautifully told, this is storytelling at its very best.
Set against the magnificent backdrop of Alaska in the waning days of World War II, The Cloud Atlas is an enthralling debut novel, a story of adventure and awakening-and of a young soldier who came to Alaska on an extraordinary, top-secret mission, and found a world that would haunt him forever. Drifting through the night, whisper-quiet, they were the most sublime manifestations of a desperate enemy: Japanese balloon bombs. Made of rice paper, at once ingenious and deadly, they sailed thousands of miles across the Pacific, and once they started landing, the U.S. scrambled teams to find and defuse them, and then keep them secret from an already anxious public. Eighteen-year-old Louis Belk was one of those men. Dispatched to the Alaskan frontier, young Sergeant Belk was better trained in bomb disposal than in keeping secrets. And the mysteries surrounding his mission only increased when he met his superior officer-a brutal veteran OSS spy hunter who knew all too well what the balloons could do-and Lily, a Yup'ik Eskimo woman who claimed she could see the future. Louis's superior ushers him into a world of dark secrets; Lily introduces Louis to an equally disorienting world of spirits-and desire. But the world that finally tests them all is Alaska, whose vastness cloaks mysteries that only become more frightening as they unravel. Chasing after the ghostly floating weapons, Louis embarks upon an adventure that will lead him deep into the tundra. There, on the edge of the endless wilderness, he will make a discovery and a choice that will change the course of his life. At once a heart-quickening mystery and a unique love story, The Cloud Atlas is also a haunting, lyrical rendering of a little-known chapter in history. Brilliantly imagined, beautifully told, this is storytelling at its very best.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
"Everyone in Alaska had a secret in World War II," explains Catholic priest Louis Belk, remembering his early days as a bomb disposal sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps. "Most, like me, still do." As an innocent 18-year-old, Belk was sent to the wilderness to discover and destroy giant Japanese paper balloons loaded with explosives-possibly biological weapons-before word of their existence terrorized the American public. Entranced by Lily, a beautiful, half-Yup'ik, half-Russian prostitute, and browbeaten and taunted by Captain Gurley, his violent and increasingly erratic commanding officer (and Lily's lover), Belk is compelled to a dark and deadly discovery-a plague-ridden Japanese boy inside one of the balloons. Told in a series of confessional flashbacks to a dying Eskimo shaman, this remarkable first novel mixes ethereal and haunting native folklore with vivid bomb-diffusing scenes. This little-known chapter of American history will entice the book club crowd; the strong characterizations and moral dilemmas will leave them with plenty to discuss. Highly recommended.-Christine Perkins, Burlington P.L., WA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
The unlikely adventures of an 18-year-old soldier trained in bomb detection and disposal during World War II are painstakingly rendered against an Alaskan backdrop in Callanan's richly textured, sturdy debut. In the mid-1940s, Sgt. Louis Belk's main mission is to seek out and detonate Japanese hot air balloons that have been armed with explosives and deployed over North America-an unusual but deadly war weapon. The slightest rumor of the balloons' existence might have a disastrous effect on American morale, which makes the job of Belk's bomb disposal unit even more critical. The unit's commanding officer, the eccentric, unbending Capt. Thomas Gurley, is a veteran spy hunter who lost a leg in an explosion and is on the verge of losing his mind. Both Gurley and Belk are smitten with Lily, an enticingly beautiful Yup'ik-Russian Eskimo seer whose great love, Saburo, a Japanese spy, is Gurley's nemesis. When the three go out in search of Saburo, they find something even more dangerous and puzzling: a booby-trapped balloon carrying a young Japanese boy. The narrative flits back and forth from Belk's harrowing exploits as a soldier to his present-day life as an Alaskan missionary tending to his friend Ronnie, who lies on his deathbed in an Alaskan hospice. Shadowed by the darkness of "arctic hysteria," the novel is brightened by crisp descriptions of bomb mechanisms and deactivation, as well as by Belk's offbeat, lyrical narration. Atmospheric and moving, this is an impressively assured debut. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
During the last days of WWII, naive Sergeant Louis Belk, trained in bomb disposal, is dispatched to the harsh frontiers of Alaska on a secret mission--capture and preserve one of the most enigmatic armaments of the war, Japanese balloon bombs. Working with the disgraced yet fiercely determined Captain Gurley, a former OSS spy hunter with a brutal nature, Belk studies a mysterious journal for clues to the next landing site of one of these lethal weapons. While exploring the wild streets of Anchorage, where a woman is viewed as a lady of the night and all soldiers are on top-secret missions, Belk meets Lily, half-Russian and half-Yup'ik Eskimo and self-proclaimed palm reader. Lily slowly divulges her secrets to Belk, including the site of the next bomb drop, finally revealing a secret that could threaten national security, one that takes Belk, Gurley, and Lily on a midnight quest into the frozen tundra. Alluring characters and story make this first novel a good choice for historical fiction collections. --Kaite Mediatore Copyright 2003 Booklist
Kirkus Book Review
Georgetown professor, NPR commentator, and first-novelist Callanan expertly fictionalizes one of WWII's least-known stories. The phenomenon of Japanese balloon bombs carrying both explosives and lethal germs to Alaska and the northwestern US is disclosed to, and monitored by, narrator Louis Belk, a young Army Air Corps sergeant trained as a bomb disposal specialist. In a dual narrative, we follow Louis's experiences at his base in Anchorage and environs and also those a half-century later, when he spends his final days as a Catholic priest in the Alaskan wilderness at the deathbed of Yup'ik Eskimo Ronnie, a self-destructive alcoholic and professed shaman. Haunting motifs drawn from Yup'ik legend emerge in the moribund Ronnie's tall tales, which loom in the reader's awareness as parallels to the younger Louis's guilt when a bomb he's too inexperienced to defuse kills several comrades. Even more compromising emotions are churned up by his relationships with two other major characters: one is Lily, a beautiful half-breed prostitute and nominal "palm reader" who seems unusually attuned to the "spirit world" later evoked by the dying Ronnie; the other is her lover (and Louis's superior officer), Captain Gurley, a hard-bitten, sardonic, wounded veteran who bullies and taunts his young subordinate into assisting his quest to persuade the Army that "the Japs . . . have reached North America." Callanan's complex plot tightens neatly when Gurley learns of Lily's intimacy with Saburo, a Japanese fisherman (and perhaps spy) who'd disappeared into an uncharted forest--and leads Louis and Lily on an expedition that becomes a voyage of bitter discovery. In a climactic deathbed scene, Callanan brilliantly connects the fate of a boy sent across the ocean in a balloon with the shaman's tale of a ceaselessly crying child--and with the last-revealed of Lily's secrets. A haunting story that will remind many of Ondaatje's The English Patient--and that merits the comparison. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.