Arise Beloved

by Glynn Compton Harper

Glynn Compton Harper's novel, Arise Beloved, set in WWII, is an adventure-filled story of love and war about an orphaned, rootless young woman, Becky Bright and her first lover, Troy McNutt, a navy pilot. Afraid to fly at first, she agrees to go up with Troy and finds she loves flying. Troy teaches her to fly and she soon becomes a famous woman aviator. After Pearl Harbor, unable to fly because of the war, Becky separates from Troy and joins the courageous Women Air Force Service Pilots, the famed WASP of WWII. Seeking a family, she marries Jerry Crawford, a B-17 navigator, a man with a close-knit family, but Jerry is unfaithful to her and asks for a divorce just before he is shot down and captured by the Germans. Expelled from the WASPs after an unauthorized flight, Becky risks her life in a dangerous mission to exchange her faithless husband for Gunther Hammer, a German POW. In the meantime, her first lover, Troy, is shot down by the Japanese and marooned on a South Pacific island where he fathers a daughter with a Polynesian woman, who later abandons him and their child. After the war, Becky is reunited with Troy, and with his daughter, they become the family she has been seeking all her life.

626 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2006

Reviews

[Tara Chevrestt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first 3/4 of this novel is terrrific! I love Becky Bright, female aviatrix and WASP and all her little imperfections, her disdain for men in general, her attitude, her spunk, and the way she makes it in a "man's world." Her lover, Troy, is a bit of wimpy fellow at first but he really shows his stuff in the end. Her husband is a horrible match for her and comes with a nightmare mother in law (a bit overdone.. the mother in law bit) and I especially enjoyed the war scenes. Very craftily done. However, 3/4 thru the novel, a German prisoner of war is introduced and his recent life story. He happens to be a homosexual, thus readers are suddenly introduced to a lot of homosexual characters. This took me by surprise, as the back of the book never says anything about this and it plays a good part of the story.. A couple chapters in a row, actually. Normally, this would not bother me, but the same sex relationship consists of a barely legal young man and a his benefactor, father like figure. I think a little warning would have been nice. Thus, four stars instead of five. The rest of the story regarding Becky, Troy, and the war was terrific. Knowing what I do now, I would not have paid 18 to 25 dollars for it tho.