Oakley M. Hall, Love and War in California

Love and War in California

Oakley M. Hall

Dunne, Apr 17 2007, $24.95

ISBN: 0312357621

On December 7, 1941, Payton Daltry attends San Diego State University. When Pearl Harbor is bombed, Payton's friends and older brother Richie join the military. On December 8, 1941, a junior at the college, Payton decides to complete his degree and make it with wealthy Barbara "Bonny" Bonington, whom he jus met, and is inconveniently pregnant by her boyfriend Johnny Pierce.

Payton courts Bonny and helps her meet an abortionist. However, her family rejects him as his ambition to write goes against the belief that Bonington males are doctors and Bonington females are doctors' wives. They split up as her parents are too influential and eventually he goes to war. Years later they will meet once again, tied in a way that neither could have predicted when they first met in the "caff" at SDU the day after the day of infamy.

In many ways Payton is a poor selection to serve as the prime focus of a novel yet it is just because he is a pitiable choice, he makes this predominantly war years' storyline work. The storyline focuses on Payton as he makes decisions that differ from just about everyone around him as they sacrifice their way of life and perhaps ultimately their lives while he chooses to continue his current path with the only major change being his courting of Bonny. Well-written. LOVE AND WAR IN CALIFORNIA emphasizes the need for sacrifice by everyone including giving up at least temporarily love when the disruptiveness of war occurs; Oakley M. Hall contrasts WWII in which almost all Americans were engaged in the war cause in some way to President Bush's failure to demand Americans outside of the soldiers and their families sacrifice butter for guns make that protective armor.

Harriet Klausner