This one was a treat of a library find, meandering down the aisles. Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers is a beautiful story that unfolds during World War II in Hawaii. This book is many things and all of them simply gorgeous. Early on we are introduced to a missing persons case that has gone cold. It is a war story full of lovers separated by duty, suspicion, xenophobia, the oppressive threat of attack, and the harsh realities of martial law. It is also a story of strong women who survive all of this by banding together as part of their larger community.
Ackerman builds her world slowly, from two vantage points. Violet is a teacher and mother who’s husband went missing. She is a transplant from Minnesota and our connection to all things of the Island. Our other narrator is Ella, Violet’s 10 year old daughter, for whom the stress of keeping a big secret and the trauma that she witnessed manifests in some PTSD. She brings us the story from a child’s perspective and gives us a different view of Violet.
By the time the story takes off, the reader has a comprehensive and visceral understanding of the time and place…as if you were almost one of the neighbors. The characters are vibrant, unique, and fleshed out. By the end, I was so engrossed that it was a bit of a mourning when I had read the last page. It was a story I hadn’t read before and beautifully told. The characters were magnificent and flawed and beautiful and broken. The romantic tensions felt real, and the friendships (the real cornerstone of the story) even more so. I really enjoyed this book once I got into it and I think it would make an excellent mini-series.
“Violet felt giddy from alcohol and the closeness of her friends. She thought about how each was fashioned from her own unique pattern. All in this beautiful mess as one, lives sewn together with threads of love and loneliness.”