Review: The Wind is Not a River by Brian Payton

Title: The Wind is Not a River

Author: Brian Payton

Genre: Historical fiction

Pages: 308

Published: 2014

In 1942, Japanese forces seized the islands of Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians.  Few people remember this episode of the war because U.S. censors speedily ordered a news embargo to hide the invasion from the public. There were also immediate orders to evacuate press and civilian personnel, including the Aleut people. Would the Japanese turn these islands into strategic air bases?  Would the fighting spread to the lower 48 states?  This little-known part of Alaska’s history provides the background for Brian Payton’s second novel, The Wind is not a River.

As the novel opens, John Easley, a National Geographic reporter, has lost his brother to antiaircraft fire over the  island of Attu.  Hoping to find meaning in his loss and also report on the Alaska campaign, John disregards the press blackout and slips into the Aleutians. Ultimately, he finds his way onto a bombing run and is shot down and marooned with the only other survivor of the crash, an airman from Texas.  The two of them battle the elements and the threat of starvation while evading capture by Japanese patrols.  Here, Payton is at his best.  He creates a raw, unforgiving time and place against which Easley and his companion struggle to stay alive.  This struggle grips the reader and dominates the first part of the novel.

Back in Seattle, Helen, John’s wife, has stayed behind to look after her father. She’s particularly unhappy because she and John parted on bad terms.  When it begins to appear that John is missing, Helen takes a desperate gamble in an effort to find him.  She joins a U.S.O. troupe that’s traveling to Alaska to entertain servicemen.  Helen has only a little experience singing and dancing, but is willing to do whatever is necessary to find out what has happened to her husband.  Her heartbreaking journey, like John’s, suggests that love sometimes compels each of us to do extraordinary things. 

Paton writes, “Rivers flow throughout the seasons — under bright summer sun, plates of winter ice — morning, noon and night. Wind rises up and fades away, but a river flows endlessly. And our suffering? This too shall pass.” As they say in the Aleutians, “The wind is not a river.”

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Reviewed by Ann

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