Genre: Historical Fiction
Title: The Wind Whispers War: A Vietnam Love Story
Author: kgcummings (as it appears on book cover)
The Wind Whispers War: A Vietnam Love Story, the first in K.G. Cumming’s new five-book series, lends a personal element to the history of the Vietnam War era. Beginning in the early 1960s, The Wind Whispers War follows Jeff “Mad Dog” Madison, a playboy and career airman in Florida, as he first meets Beth Campbell, a sweet, naïve country girl just stepping out from the traditional values of her hometown. Their whirlwind relationship and subsequent life together makes this a highly romantic, individualized work of historical fiction.
The Wind Whispers War is almost too good to be true, and makes an excellent beginning to a series about the era. Author K. G. Cummings is clearly a master of romance, and the picture that she paints of Jeff and Beth will sweep readers off their feet along with them. Likewise, the author’s characters are so true to life that their emotions are almost tangible to readers, who may feel as though they’re experiencing the first pangs of true love along with them. Even the book’s steamy romance scenes are infused with a romantic depth, which make them all the more enjoyable.
Clearly, K. G. Cummings is knowledgeable about the period she is dealing with, but what stands out most is her ability to interweave historical fact with her plot and characters. The result is a seamless story that gives readers a true feel for what the period was like to live through, from the perspective of real people. This is an especially valuable work because it is about the Vietnam War, a topic that is often neglected by historians and fiction writers alike. While it is not a historically detailed account of the military and political aspects of the conflict’s beginning, it is equally valuable as a look at the conflict through the eyes of a single family affected by the war.
As the first in this series, The Wind Whispers War covers only the very beginning of the conflict and deals with the idyllic domestic relationship between Jeff and Beth during this period, so it is not an action-packed war story of the conflict. However, it is a wonderful beginning to a series about Vietnam, perfectly setting up the idealism and innocence of the beginning of the war as a backdrop for the next books, which deal with the tumultuous times ahead. Readers will want to buy the second and third books immediately to learn what becomes of the wonderful characters they discover in The Wind Whispers War. Highly Recommended by reviewer: Rebecca Henderson, Allbook Reviews
