In “Echoes of Us,” author Joy Jordan-Lake takes us to a small island on the coast of Georgia, where unbeknownst to most Americans, more people died during WWII from German submarines than died at Pearl Harbor from the bombing. St. Simons Island is a charming little place just north of the Florida border. The dual time line of the story, in the present day and during the war, highlights the differences and the similarities of life on the island now and all those years ago.
We are introduced to two sisters, Kitzie and Hadley, who run a party planning business. They are hired by a German businessman, an extremely wealthy man whose family, with two other families, owns Boundless, a very successful international real estate development firm. The three founders met on St. Simons Island during the war. Dov Silverberg was a Jewish flight instructor from London, highly educated, kind, and passionate about doing what he could during the war effort. William Shakespeare Dobbins was a country boy from Tennessee with a dual ability to quote Shakespeare and speak with such a country accent that he was often seen, at first glance, as a hillbilly. The unlikely third partner was Hans Hessler, a German prisoner of war who became so disgusted with Hitler and the war that he became a deserter. As such he was despised by the other POWs.
The element that draws the three men together is partly Joan DuBarry, a young woman who also lives on the island. Joan and her twin brother Sam were born on St. Simons Island and grew up there. Sam learned to fly and taught his sister. When he goes to war, Joan is furious and worried. She meets Dov, Will, and even Hans as the war years progress.
The author brings to life in terrifying detail the fear and terror of local residents as German submarines ply the ocean off their little island. While we are learning about the danger that the war in Europe brought to small St. Simons Island, we also are learning more about Kitzie and Hadley, the sisters whose mother was a drug addict, who moved from foster home to foster home, and who ended up in California with a fairly successful business.
Hadley is the protective one, the older sister. She’s furious that in spite of their understanding that they wouldn’t take a job without them both agreeing, Kitzie has contracted to plan and execute a huge party for all the family members of the Boundless corporation. It’s a grand undertaking, and there’s a lot of research and creativity involved. Over the course of their investigation into the past, Hadley and Kitzie meet many of the long-time St. Simons’ residents and learn about how the three men’s lives overlapped on the island.
The manner in which Jordan-Lake unfolds the story, the way she cleverly matches up the research the sisters are doing now with the action in the past, allows the story to flow without interruption. One chapter is about Joan in 1943 and what is happening to her, for example, when the next chapter in the present shows Hadley examining some artifact from that same year which provides more information about what happened to Joan in the past. This deft manipulation of past and present, so that they almost seem to co-exist, is brilliant. There is also some information which has been lost to time, and that becomes important when there is a reveal late in the story.
The story is exquisitely conceived and shared. The dialogue, the tension between some of the characters, even the tension between the sisters — all factors are carefully and believably executed. The historical facts and fiction meld together as we learn about Joan’s disappearance and a mysterious older woman who lives on the island. I was enthralled by the story and the clever manner in which Jordan-Lake ends some chapters with a cliffhanger, then moves on to other characters in different timelines, all of which works to virtually force the reader to intensely turn page after page.
This is not a short novel, but in some ways it’s a quick read because we like all the characters and we want to see what the future holds for them. While we know that Boundless is a corporation in the midst of a power struggle, Jordan-Lake doesn’t spend a lot of time on that issue, and that works well because the story isn’t about the company, it’s about the three founders and their descendants. And the sisters. It’s about the war and the racism that existed in those years and, to some extent, to this day. It’s about the paternalistic attitude of men during the 1940s and how, even when women pilots were every bit as capable and brave as male pilots, they weren’t allowed to help in the war effort — in the United States, that is. In England, women pilots had a significant role during the war.
The story is about unrequited love and the sacrifice that situations sometimes entail. It’s about the ties that bind us to family and the friendships that can move mountains. It’s about romance and duty. And it shows us the power of feelings that transcend religion or race or nationality. It’s a beautiful story, with some lovely twists, and it would be a perfect book club read because of the myriad themes that could be discussed.
This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.