EVERYTHING WE HAD: No Merciful War Book 1 by Tom Burkhalter – WWII Aviation, Historical Fiction, Military History

Everything We Had, book one of Tom Burkhalter’s No Merciful War series is an inexorable thrill that will grip readers tight. It starts with a poker game, through which a main character’s luck soon becomes evident. But will that luck hold out?

Jack—the poker player—and Charlie—Jack’s older brother—have been separated by war, even though that war has yet to be declared. Everything We Had focuses more on the machinations leading up to US involvement in World War II than on actual combat. The gears of war that have so many young men caught in them move with gradual but inevitable force, and so Everything We Had takes a more thoughtful approach to a historic moment in time.

Connecting with the characters is a gradual process as you get to know the intricacies that make up their individual personalities. This sets the reader up to feel the emotions of the characters as they face an uncertain fate, and throughout the book the author’s clear and methodical research shines with details such as specific views, locations, and—most notably—comprehensive descriptions of the airplanes Jack and Charlie pilot. This allows the reader to become deeply familiar with the motivations of the characters and the capabilities of the airplanes they fly.

The importance of their family gradually emerges, too, through their mother’s letters and their memories of their father who flew racing planes. The more readers learn, the more attachment they feel to these characters, giving weight to the growing danger they face.

Even side characters in Everything We Had have names, hometowns, and sweethearts they’ve left behind. This grants a sense of truth in the actual people who were lost to war.

Readers may not track every last piece of information—especially the technical details of planes and flight—but the story remains accessible, with its most important details emerging with time. Like flying a P-26, it takes a bit of patience and skill to follow everything in this book, but Burkhalter trusts his readers to keep up.

The perspective switches between Jack, Charlie, and occasionally Al, who becomes Charlie’s navigator. Al’s viewpoint lends interest at first, but Everything We Had focuses on Jack and Charlie’s narratives as they become more complex and dire.

Through dialogue, readers start to piece together the puzzle: why Jack and Charlie’s father is gone, who Jack’s mysterious love interest is, and the strength of Charlie’s desire to be a leader. Burkhalter makes good use of dialogue for exposition as readers see how the war gradually unfolds, and how little information the men prepping for combat are told. For much of the book, Jack and Charlie aren’t even sure of each other’s whereabouts.

Sensory descriptions help ground this intricate story.

A few wonderful flying scenes—including Jack flying in challenge to a rival pilot—give physicality to the technical descriptions of planes. Small details, like a black Bakelite telephone, and a manila envelope holding mysterious contents, make the narrative even more tangible—not to mention historically accurate. Character descriptions remain simple, but with so many named characters in the story, this helps avoid overwhelming the reader with information.

The book uses true-to-form period language and stereotypes of US enemies. While this can make for an uncomfortable read at times, it serves the book’s historically-accurate illustration of  a growing conflict. However, the main characters show their good hearts. They speak respectfully of women and, for the most part, of each other. In fact, a sense of camaraderie grows steadily even among former rivals as the war creeps closer.

When the war arrives, late in the book, it shakes the reader like a stone thrown into the still pond of the characters’ lives, who wait for war with a growing sense of apprehension.

With war, of course, comes injury and more death than these characters have ever seen.

Yet Burkhalter steers away from lurid, bloody descriptions and instead focuses on how the violence affects Jack and Charlie internally as people. They come from a privileged background, with a healthy dose of luck, and have distinguished themselves each as leaders by the time war arrives. Yet it’s far from certain that these accolades will help protect them from the hopeless-sounding odds: the US is under-prepared and low on supplies, while the enemy has at least one ace in the hole.

After such a carefully paced book, the ending comes quickly, and leaves some loose ends untied, nudging readers to continue with this fascinating series.

Thanks to Burkhalter’s meticulous research, real events, places, and even people in the early Pacific war get a well-deserved remembrance in the form of fiction.

The No Merciful War series by Tom Burkhalter won First Place in the CIBA Series Awards for Fiction Series.