Once a Warrior

Romance writer Baker's (When Last We Loved) latest dramatizes an enduring love story against a background of war. In the first half of the book, Baker describes the varied experiences of three friends from Kansas City, Mo., who serve in WWII. First Lieutenant John Brown goes down with his plane in a taut, moving scene; Private Charlie Miller succumbs to shell shock after being held in a prisoner-of-war camp; Second Lieutenant Mike Scanlon fights in the Allied invasion at Omaha Beach and the Battle of the Bulge. Wounded several times, Mike falls in love with a young member of the French Resistance, Anne-Marie Gerard, and they marry. In time, their daughter Catherine, married to John Brown's son, learns that her husband is MIA after his plane is shot down in Vietnam. Following Johnny's instructions in a letter he sent before disappearing, Cat travels to Saigon to contact a mysterious renegade named Cain, and thus begins another odyssey of adventure, intrigue and passionate love. Baker's writing indulges in cliches and moves toward the formulaic, but her descriptions of war, particularly the WWII battles, are grimly honest, and they effectively drive home the novel's concern with the wasteful loss of human life. (Nov.)