Author to speak at G’land Library
Rising Tide is Shaara’s novel approach to WWII



GUILDERLAND — Best-selling author Jeff Shaara is astonished by his most recent success. His latest novel, The Rising Tide, the opening act of a projected trilogy, was released Nov. 7 by Ballantine Books. It debuted at number eight on both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.
"It’s the strongest response I’ve gotten yet," Shaara said.

Shaara, who has been touring the country with The Rising Tide, is the author of many best-selling war novels. He is also the son of Michael Shaara, author of the classic Civil War novel The Killer Angels. He began his writing career by writing a sequel to his father’s novel.

Shaara will be reading from his latest work at the Guilderland Public Library Dec. 8.

He is the sixth author honored in the library’s Carol J. Hamblin Notable Author Speaker Series, and his appearance concludes a two-month program on World War II.

The Rising Tide focuses on American involvement in North Africa following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, a career officer, is stuck in a cat-and-mouse game with British General Bernard Montgomery. Enter U.S. forces, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower plans Operation Torch, a three-pronged attack of northern Africa.

Allowing the reader access to his characters’ inner thoughts and conversations held behind closed doors, Shaara creates a vivid account of a historical benchmark.

A host of political and military leaders — including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Montgomery, and Rommel — as well as ground soldiers make up Shaara’s cast.

Both Germany and America, he makes clear, were not without a sense of the past. After having lost World War I, Germany is led by Hitler, a fearless dictator obsessed with reuniting the German people and reclaiming Germany’s lost pride.
"Hitler understands manipulation," Shaara said of the German ruler. "He emphasized revenge. Germany was beat up after World War I, and he uses that to rally his people to strike back."

Hitler was very effective in manipulating the German people, Shaara said.

On the American side, the Civil War was fought just 50 years before many of the officers who played large roles in the World War II were in the military academy, Shaara said.
"These guys were at West Point around 1910, 1915, and the Civil War was a key point of study"The Civil War was still fresh," he said.

Shaara creates believable characters, regardless of which side they’re on.
He paints Rommel, "The Desert Fox," head of the Afrika Korps, in a way that lets the reader sympathize with him.

Short on men and supplies, Rommel, far from his homeland, is greatly outnumbered and surrounded by British and American forces. His supplies never reach him. While holed up in Africa, Rommel continually reads inaccurate, propagandistic accounts of his feats.
"I’ve heard a lot of that," Shaara said of reader sympathy for Rommel. "The cliché is: He’s German, so he must be a bad guy," he said. "I found it very gratifying that he thought Hitler was not all there. Hitler gives this ridiculous order for Rommel to attack, and Rommel replies that he is insane. That’s a direct quote," he said. "He sees the cracks," Shaara said.
"I’m not a psychiatrist, but the scenes are told from Rommel’s point of view, and Rommel’s take is that Hitler is unstable," Shaara said.

Shaara added that Rommel was a career officer doing his job, and that, since he was in Africa, fighting a war in a country far from his home, he probably didn’t know that the German Gestapo was murdering Jews.
"He was 1,500 miles away," Shaara emphasized. "To make the broad generalization that everyone knew what was going on is ridiculous. There were a lot who were closer [to Germany] who knew what was going on."

Shaara also allows the reader to see that, though a man might hold a higher rank, he’s not without a sense of fear.
"I got a kick out of writing that scene," Shaara said of the account of an American captain vomiting in front of one of his men.
"The reality is, the big, tough captain is just as scared," he said.

Scare tactics were used often by Hitler.
"Hitler tells his men what to do, and he throws them out if he doesn’t like what’s going on," Shaara said.

Roosevelt, on the other hand, though he had political realities at home in the U.S., fully backed Eisenhower, Shaara said.

Comparing their relationship to President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant’s in the Civil War, Shaara said that Roosevelt entrusted Eisenhower with the responsibility of handling the armies.

The Rising Tide will be followed by a second book that, Shaara said, will focus on the Normandy invasion. The third book, Shaara said, will focus on the Battle of the Bulge, crossing the Rhine River, and the fall of Hitler.

Since the release of The Rising Tide, Shaara has received many letters from Marines, which have compelled him to commit to write yet another book after completing the trilogy. "It’ll deal with the end of the war in the Pacific," Shaara said.
"It’s still a European trilogy, but there will be a fourth book," he said.

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Jeff Shaara will be speaking at the Guilderland Public Library Friday Dec. 8 at 7:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Seating is limited. Free tickets will be available at the library on a first-come, first-served basis on Saturday, Dec. 2, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Helderberg Room.

For further information about the event, call 456-2400 or visit www.GuilderlandPublic.info. For more information about the author, visit www.jeffshaara.com.