Sometimes words can hurt

Book Review of "90 Day Wonder: Darkness Remembered" by Leon Cooper

Who started the dirty rumor? I learned the simple rhyme in elementary school, and it has hung around with me ever since. You know the childhood chant, "Sticks and stones/May break my bones,/But words can never hurt me." Let me dispel this falsehood. Words can hurt. They stick to our bodies like invisible glue. This is true for words spoken and unspoken.

"90 Day Wonder: Darkness Remembered," captures the ugly truth about how words can harm and mutilate souls. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor the military needed leaders, and Leon Cooper describes his quick training as an officer in the US Navy directly after college. His first assignment is aboard the USS Harry Lee.

Once on deck, he stood at attention in Captain Joseph Boda quarters, answering routine questions. As Boda stands up from his chair, tossing a few coins rhythmically in his hands, one of the coins falls on the floor. Leon doesnt to pick it up, realizing this is a test. He reflects, "I was off on the wrong foot with Captain Boda and my life aboard the Lee was to become a floating hell."(pg. 57) For the next four years, Leon survives Bodas verbal abuse, but Bodas words continue to circulate in Leons mind. Even after Leon is honorably discharged from the Navy, the words plague Leon to the point of threatening Bodas life.

At the height of the storys action, Leon causally recalls the time as a child, and how his parents bought his brother Bill a bike, because had a paper route. When Leon whined for a bike also, his mother soothingly replies, "Maybe next year." (pg. 123) At the time, the scene seems insignificant, because one of his shipmates is waking him from a dream. But this dream of past reality describes the crux of Leons attitude towards Boda or anyone in authority.

After years of serving in military and hating Boda, Dr. Metzler his psychiatrist, describes the situation perfectly, "You might have come out of the service okay, but you went in there with problems you didnt know you had. You were the helpless victim at home with your big brother, and you became the helpless victim on shipboard where you ran afoul of Boda." (pg. 266) Leon waited too long to talk about his anger towards his parents. The time lapse caused those unspoken words to become deeply embedded in his body, causing a raging fire, which could not be squelched.

Leon Cooper and Don Tait keep the reader anxiously awaiting for the story to unfold. The action often flips from the present to the past, but there is a smooth flow of events. The time line gets fuzzy towards the middle, when we were waiting for the birth of his second child. It is only at the end, when I learned he had five children. And it is not definitely clear if the cause of his wifes death relates to "the curse" (pg. 51) But, the physical combat and the mental battle keep the reader interested. I recommend "90 Day Wonder: Darkness Remembered" to anyone who likes military stories. It is also a good book for introverts to read about the danger of allowing words to hurt, instead of them letting go.

Reviewed By: Judine Slaughter -- Express Yourself Books

Comments about this review from the author:

Judine - I hope you won''t take my reaction to your review the wrong way ... but it''s not "words" by the commanding officer of Cooper''s ship that is the principle message of the book. Rather, it''s the madness of sociopath Boda, including his reckless commands, that leads to the deaths of many of Cooper''s shipmates. In wartime, military organizations are forced to put misfits or worse, madmen like Boda, in command positions -- this what leads to the conflict between Cooper, with his sense of justice, and Boda, with his absolute powers.

So, this is not a "war story" as such -- rather, it is the playing out of right vs wrong that happens to many of us during our lives. In this case, it happens to take place in a war setting -- and therefore is intensified -- but the main elements of the conflict happen often in less dramatic circuimstances to many of us.

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