the last thing you surrender by leonard pitts jr

While remaining true to his characters, Pitts brings the story lines to realistic conclusions even as he holds out hope for the future, resulting in a polished, affecting novel. George endures horrific conditions in the Pacific as Thelma faces growing racial hostility at work, culminating in a brutal moment of violence that compels her to make a difficult decision.

Luther, deciding this is a white man’s war, tries to evade the draft but ends up serving with a tank battalion in Europe. George and Thelma begin a correspondence after he returns to active duty she takes a job in a shipyard. She and her brother, Luther Hayes, a bitter alcoholic, are living with the memory of their parents’ lynching 20 years earlier. Eric dies, and while George recuperates, he pays a condolence call on Eric’s widow, Thelma. Marine Private George Simon-wealthy, religious, white-survives the sinking of his ship because Eric Gordy, a black messman, rescues him. It centers on a trio of finely drawn characters, two black and one white, all from Alabama, whose worlds collide because of Pearl Harbor.

Leonard Pitts Jr., a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, turns again to America’s fraught history of race relations in this unflinching, gritty WWII saga. Publishers Weekly Editorial Review for The Last Thing You Surrender What does it take to change someone’s mind about race? What does it take for a country and a people to move forward, transformed?

Set against a backdrop of violent racial conflict on both the front lines and the home front, The Last Thing You Surrender explores the powerful moral struggles of individuals from a divided nation. a black man, who as a child saw his parents brutally lynched, is conscripted to fight Nazis for a country he despises and discovers a new kind of patriotism in the all-black 761st Tank Battalion. a young black woman, widowed by the same events at Pearl, finds unexpected opportunity and a dangerous friendship in a segregated Alabama shipyard feeding the war. Pulitzer-winning journalist and bestselling novelist Leonard Pitts, Jr.’s new historical page-turner is a great American tale of race and war, following three characters from the Jim Crow South as they face the enormous changes World War II triggers in the United States.Ĭould you find the courage to do what’s right in a world on fire?Īn affluent white marine survives Pearl Harbor at the cost of a black messman’s life only to be sent, wracked with guilt, to the Pacific and taken prisoner by the Japanese.

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The last thing you surrender by leonard pitts jr