The History of War is always important

Especially in Historical Fiction

The Hemingway Awards is our Division for Historical Fiction of 20th Century Wartime. Named for famed War Correspondent and Author Ernest Hemingway, his writings embody much of what this award covers. He didn’t write only war related content, but A Farewell to Arms and For Whom The Bell Tolls are both amazing looks into the rather tumultuous early 20th century.

These are the categories for the 2024 Hemingway Awards for 20th and 21st century Wartime Fiction:

• World War 1
• World War 2
• Women in War
• Occupation/ Diaspora
• Espionage
• Love in Wartime
• Specific Campaign/ Theater/ Battle

The dropping of a nuclear bomb in Stanley Kubrik’s dark satire “Dr. Strangelove”

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We are delighted to celebrate the 2023 Winners of the Hemingway Awards!

• J.L. Oakley – The Brisling Code
• Kathryn Gauci – In the Shadow of the Pyrenees
• Michael J Cooper – Crossroads of Empire
• Ivan Luiz Hernandez – Isla Vulnerable
• Linda Stewart Henley – Kate’s War
• Jerena Tobiasen – Tsarina’s Crown
• William McClain – Alice’s War

The Grand Prize Winner for the CIBA 2023 Hemingway Book  Awards is:

The Silver Waterfall

A Novel of The Battle of Midway

by Kevin Miller

We love stories about wartime history here at Chanticleer. Here are some of the best books we’ve reviewed recently.

AN EMPTY HOUSE DOESN’T SNEEZE
By David Scott Richardson

In David Scott Richardson’s YA WWII historical novel, An Empty House Doesn’t Sneeze, teenager Scott Johannsen—“Scotty” to his mom and friends—leads us on an adventure through the wartime Ravenna neighborhood in Seattle, Washington.

Boeing manufactures B-17s, his grandparents and neighbors grow victory gardens, his parents build a bomb shelter in their basement, and mandatory blackouts occur every night. Scotty navigates a chaotic world filled with danger and wonder yet finds security with family and friends in this heartfelt story.

Scotty runs with his pack—James, Marty, and Burr. We witness what lengths they will go to on a search for chocolate. With Ravenna Park as a backyard and Puget Sound just a short drive away, Scotty’s life is filled with exploration of the natural world. His fishing adventures with his dad in the Sound become an exciting way to supplement his family’s food rations as he dreams about netting a fighting salmon.

Read more here!

ROSES In DECEMBER: Hamilton Place, Book 2
By Mark A. Gibson

Roses in December is the epic conclusion to Mark A. Gibson’s compelling two-part family saga, Hamilton Place. Now focusing on the family’s next generation, James Hamilton Jr.—Jimmy—follows in the footsteps of the father he never met, a Vietnam War hero who died in battle, and ultimately finds his own path in life.

Pressured by a conning mother-in-law only out for monetary gain, the elder Jimmy’s widow, Becca, is pushed to marry Mack Lee, her deceased husband’s older brother who proves to be a cheating and abusive husband. Trapped in this loveless marriage, Becca hopes that attending church will remove her son from the toxic influence of her new husband and set him on the right path to a good life. But it’s the discovery of young Jimmy’s superior photographic memory that opens the door to a brighter future, and he sets a course to an outstanding medical career, coupled with military service in Afghanistan.

Gibson delivers the recent past with a great sense of immediacy, showing events that ripple into our contemporary world using pop references that are relevant in today’s world.

Read more here!

AFTER ME
By J. Shep

The arrival of a mysterious package makes for an enticing beginning in J. Shep’s After Me. Inside we find a manuscript with the same text as the book we’re about to read. This inventive start lends a sense of realism and truth to what follows and creates a vivid yet hazy quality, like memory itself.

After Me travels back in time to rural France just after World War II. The setting appears idyllic at first—almost unbelievably so. Still, there’s a disturbing undercurrent felt from the start. Not from an unwanted presence, but rather from an absence.

Told from the perspective of Ellande, a young boy, he recounts the summer his parents die in an accident and he and his nine-year-old little sister, Madeleine-Grace, are sent to their extended family’s summer home in France. Their care seems competent at first—but cracks in the façade gradually emerge as Ellande begins his tale.

Read more here!

EVERYTHING WE HAD: No Merciful War Book 1
By Tom Burkhalter

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.

Read more here!