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Richie Perry wasn’t supposed to be in Vietnam. Yeah, he’d enlisted in the Army after graduating from high school because he couldn’t afford college and someone had to support his family, especially his younger brother, Ken. But an Army doctor said Richie had a bum knee, so he wasn’t fit for combat duty. And definitely not for duty in Vietnam.

But there was a paperwork mix up. Richie was shipped off to Vietnam while the rest of his unit was sent to Germany, and although Richie arrived in Vietnam, his medical papers didn’t seem to have made it at all.

Richie can’t leave Vietnam without the medical profile. While they wait for it to arrive, Richie is to stay with the squad he was assigned to. He’s in the infantry, part of a squad with a couple other guys new to Vietnam: Peewee and Johnson, both of whom are black, as is Richie, and Jenkins. Rumors around the camp say that the war will end soon, but in the meantime, patrols are still needed, landing zones must be secured, and villages visited. And in spite of the rumors, it seems as if the fighting is getting worse. It doesn’t help that Captain Stewart is volunteering the squads under his command, including Richie’s, for duties in an attempt to increase his kill totals, hoping this will lead to his promotion. Nor does the soldiers’ suspicions that a racist sergeant is putting the black soldiers in the most dangerous positions.

Prolific author Walter Dean Myers is in fine form in Fallen Angels. It’s not a romantic depiction of war, but a terribly human one. Bonds are formed among the squad members, making the toll of seeing friends die that much greater. They are forced into situations where they must kill or be killed; characters—characters readers come to care for—must kill in order to survive, and in some cases, they will die anyway.

Myers doesn’t linger excessively on sentimentality, however. The colloquial dialogue, including some racist and homophobic language used by the soldiers*, is realistic and sharp. Richie is a sympathetic narrator, and since Myers is equally adept at writing battle scenes and quieter moments, Fallen Angels is fast-paced, thoughtful, and very readable.

If you’ve read Sunrise Over Fallujah (discussed here earlier this month), Richie’s name may be familiar, since he is the uncle of the main character in the former book.

* probably one of the reasons Fallen Angels is frequently challenged. It was the 36th most challenged book between 1990 and 1999, and 11th on the list of the 100 most challenged books between 2000 and 2009.

Book source: public library.

Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.

0 Comments on Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers as of 1/1/1900

My special guest today is Lauren Kate, author of Fallen. Kate grew up in Dallas, sent to school in Atlanta, and started writing in New York. She's also the author of The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove. She's currently working on the sequel to Fallen, Torment. Kate was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to answer my questions.

Thanks so much for the interview, Lauren! Tell us, what was your inspiration for Fallen?

I got the idea for Fallen from a line in Genesis that describes a group of angels who were cast out of heaven for falling in love with mortal women. I started thinking about what it would be like to be a normal girl--suddenly the object of an angel's affection. What kind of baggage would an angel have? What would her very over-protective parents think? From there, this whole world unfurled in my head. Fallen angels, demons, reincarnation, and the war in heaven were all battling for a piece of the action.

I found the atmosphere in the book deliciously dark. How conscious do you have to be of language to create such an effect?

Thank you! It took me until the second draft of Fallen to realize that the setting was really another character in the story. At times, I struggled with those descriptions—like, how many times can I use the word “humid?”—but then, once I started to see how integral Savannah and Sword and Cross were to Luce’s storyline, I started to have more fun with it. Torment is set in an entirely different place, but I like to think the setting is just as relevant and important, and just as much fun.

Did you plot the story in advance or did the story and characters develop as you wrote?

I surprised myself by meticulously plotting out Fallen before I wrote it. Character descriptions, paragraph long synopses for each chapter, “big” endings, the whole deal. The outline (along with a few chapters) was shared with writer-friends, agents and/or editors at very early stages. And because the story was larger and more complicated than I’d first realized, I actually did revisions on the outline. Way more plotting than I’d ever done before.

At the end of plotting, when I was ready to plunge into the story, it was comforting to sit down every day and know I had to write a chapter where x happened, followed by y, and then z. But sometimes, it was also uninspiring. Suddenly, Y bored me, and Z felt really predictable. But it was in the outline, which fit together like a puzzle! What to do? Eventually, I realized there were days when I would have to loosen my leash from my outlines, to let the story adapt and change organically as I went along. This was a very good decision, and I think the book is stronger because of both my plotting and my plot-straying.

Who is your favorite character in the book? Why?

I love Arriane. The crazy ones are always the most fun, aren’t they? She is crazy, but she’s also smart and loyal and funny and will be very important to Luce over the course of the series.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing this novel?

This is the first time I’ve written any kind of series and it was very, very different from my experience writing my first novel, The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove. Because Luce’s story is so far-reaching and will take so long to tell, the challenge of the first book was doing all the work setting up the world of these characters. There were so many rules to invent, so many back-stories to keep straight, and so many plot twists to withhold from the reader for later books! All of that was a challenge, but I *think* it paid off for me as a writer. Because so much is already in place, Torment has been vastly