Book Review: ‘Hold Strong’ sets a love story amid the greatest maritime horror of World War II

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This year the world will mark the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, when Japan formally surrendered to the Allies and ended the horrors of World War II. Eight decades later, “Hold Strong,” a work of historical fiction by Robert Dugoni, written in partnership with academic researchers Jeff Langholz and Chris Crabtree, proves those horrors are still fertile storytelling ground.

“Hold Strong” is the story of Sam Carlson and Sarah Haber, young sweethearts in Eagle Grove, Minnesota, when the story begins. He joins the Army at the tail end of the Great Depression and quickly rises in rank to become a leader of men. Taken prisoner by the Japanese in 1942, he survives a series of atrocities, from the Bataan Death March in the Philippines to captivity in a Japanese “hell ship,” the Arisan Maru. She’s “the smartest girl in class,” who is recruited while studying mathematics at Mankato State Teachers College to become a code breaker, eventually joining the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and playing a critical role in helping turn the tide of war.

Sam and Sarah are fictional, but the events they find themselves in are not. Langholz and Crabtree provide more than 100 pages in the Afterword and Notes sections citing sources and detailing the facts that ground the story. Readers can ignore them or take a deep dive.

Do the 424 pages before that stand up on their own without the historical context? They do. “Hold Strong” is cinematic in its scope, and written in a way that could easily be adapted, telling Sam’s story, then going back in time and recounting what Sarah was up to while Sam was overseas. It’s well paced, with developed characters beyond just sweethearts Sam and Sarah. There’s Father Tom, whose unshakable faith keeps Sam alive during his darkest moments, and Grace Moretti, who befriends Sarah in the Navy and tells her to use her mind “to get what you want.”

The book really takes off in the final 150 or so pages, becoming something straight out of a Tom Clancy novel, with submarines and secret codes and war-altering decisions made at a heavy cost. It’s thrilling stuff, made all the more so by its grounding in history.

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