In Yours Is the Night by Amanda Dykes, Matthew Petticrew grows up with his sister on a racetrack in New York in the early 1900s until the father who never claimed them sent them away. Matthew's sister, Celia, was sent to nursing school, Matthew to be a groom at the stables of Harvard University.
When Matthew travels with some Harvard boys to Plattsburg Training Camp to deliver horses, a chance meeting with his childhood hero, Jasper Truett, one of Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders, changes his life.
Matthew and three acquaintances are sent to the Argonne forest for more wood to reinforce the trenches.
One of the men, George Piccadilly, is a Brit whose parents had sent him to Harvard to get a divinity degree to avoid having to fight in the first World War. However, through a series of events, he ends up at Plattsburg Training Camp . He has no use for religion but somehow ends up a chaplain. His joviality and Matthew's seriousness don't seem like they would mix, but George sticks close to Matthew because he looks like he would know how to survive. Plus George thinks he can lighten Matthew up a bit.
The last acquaintance is Henry Mueller, a bookish young man who was recruited as a fresh-faced, boy-next-door to write for the newspaper about the war under the pen name Hank Jones.
As they gather wood, they hear a woman singing. George dubs her the Angel of Argonne. And then one night they meet her in person at the freshly dug grave of her grandfather.
Mireilles, called Mira, grew up with her father and grandfather in the Argonne. When the war came crashing into their quiet lives, Mira's father went to fight. Now her grandfather is gone, too.
The men feel they can't leave her alone in her forest home so near the front lines. But they don't want to send her out alone, either. They obtain permission to accompany her to her nearest relative's house.
The journey will change each of them.
It took me longer to get into this book than Amanda's previous book, Whose Waves These Are. The point of view shifts back and forth between Matthew, George, Hank, Jasper, and Mira. It took a little while to get them all sorted out. Plus there was a lot of bickering between George, whose character I didn't really like at first, and the other two younger men. It was understandable, even funny at times. But not my favorite.
But at some point, everything clicked into place. The last few chapters were just beautiful. I loved the ending. Right after finishing, I went back and reread the first few chapters, understanding them better.
The prologue and epilogue tell of the choice of a casket for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In the author's notes, Amanda tells of visiting the tomb on the centennial anniversary year and how much the symbolism meant to her. She writes that she did not mean to fictionalize the unknown soldier, but "His anonymity allows him to represent the countless ones who never came home. . . . I hope that only respect, gratitude, and a fierce guarding of the real soldier's true story---untouched by this imagined one---is found in these pages."
Some of the other quotes I liked:
That burning justice is a gift. . . . But you be sure and save it for where it's needed. Some battles aren't battles after all (p. 23, Kindle app).
I understood the way words can shape hearts. Evade the creation of mobs and fear, and instill a home-front army of citizens armed with hope (p. 65).
The sky rumbled like only the earth should, and the earth bled like only people should, and people—people lived and died like nobody, ever, should (p. 151).
War happens. We help. It's what we do. Not one of us can fix this whole mess, but maybe we can help this one moment (p. 151).
Men of few words, I was realizing, said much with their silence over here (p. 174).
"The matches . . . they are hope." They are hope. The three words socked the air from me. Bringers of hope . . . creators of light from dark, when struck on hard places (p. 178).
It's not mine to change what has happened . . . I cannot. It is mine to walk through what will come (p. 181).
There are none who can undo the past. But there is one who will carry the pain of it. He knows too well the sting of injustice. No, more than that. The blood of it. But with it, He bears the scars of his own injustice with the same hands that carry me now (p. 182).
Her brother was a thoughtful speaker, one who weighed his words and chose few of them to speak, ones that seemed always to carry so much in their depths. His sister seemed to do just the opposite—speak her words, then catch them and consider them, then say more words to explain. As if she were swimming in them, and happily so (p. 195).
What if what we believe to be our shortcomings, our oddities, are actually purposeful quirks that suit us for the moments we were made for? (p. 257).
Though I loved Whose Waves These Are more, I came to enjoy this book quite a lot as well. I'm a fan of Amanda's writing and eager to read more of her books.
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