Suzanne Rindell: Eagle & Crane, Putnam (Penguin Random House US) 9780399184291, 3. July 2018

When I was working at Penguin, we published Suzanne Rendell’s first novel, “The other Typist”, a brilliant, clever story I absolutely loved. Needless to say I was more than happy to read the proof of her upcoming latest book due July 2019.  “Eagle & Crane” is set in the time of the Depression in California following the lives of the Thorn and Yamada family and Earl Shaw’s Flying Circus.

This epic story is a doorstopper of a book, over 430 pages long which I personally found too long winded at times but the book gathers drama during the last 100 pages.  Eagle & Crane opens in 1943 with a lone FBI Agent looking into the disappearance of Kenichi and Harry Yamada from an internment camp. When inspecting the Yamada farm, he is surprised to find Louis Thorn and Ava Brooks residing on the Yamada property.  A dramatic turn of events occurs when a plane seems to drop from the sky crashing on the land during Bonner’s visit; two disfigured corpses are pulled from the wreck.  They appear to be Harry and Kenichi Yamada but something does not sit right with Agent Bonner and he starts digging despite the local sheriff’s refusal to help.

The Thorn family has felt hostile towards their Japanese neighbors for years accusing them of swindling them from their most fertile piece of land. Harry Yamada and Louis Thorn used to be friends as children but became estranged as adults. Bonner is surprised to unearth they both worked as aerial stuntmen in the Earl Shaw Flying Circus. With daredevil stunts travelling from rural towns to bigger cities they earned a reputation as “Eagle” and “Crane” gaining certain fame and excellent pay.  Rindell spins an entertaining yarn introducting two strong female characters, Ava Brooks and her mother Cleopatra, how they ended up in Earl Shaw’s travelling Flying Circus,  switching back and forth between the past and 1943.

The tragedy of Japanese Americans internment during WWII is fictionalized through the Yamada and Thorn family using these terrible events in US history as the basis for the novel.  Another inspiration for the novel came from Rindell’s family love for aviation.

“Eagle & Crane” is an entertaining read I enjoyed but it never really gripped me as   “The other typist” certainly did.