cover image SWORD OF VALOR

SWORD OF VALOR

Tom Willard, . . Forge, $24.95 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-312-87385-1

This solid conclusion to the Black Sabre Chronicles (Buffalo Soldiers; The Stone Ponies; etc.) features the same workmanlike prose, brisk pacing and knowledge of African-American military history as its predecessors. Five generations of the Sharps family have fought in the U.S. Armed Forces. In this installment, Lt. Argonne Sharps—the family's first female member of the military, a West Pointer and helicopter pilot with the Screaming Eagles—steps to the fore. She does her duty in the first Gulf War amid plenty of action and falls in love with an African-American Special Forces major. But the past casts a long shadow, in the form of flashbacks that provide a recapitulation of the earlier books and also trace the sorry history of racism in America and the U.S. Army. Life in the present is not all roses, either. Retired Gen. Samuel Sharps, the Tuskegee Airman who is now the family patriarch, must bury his son Franklin, killed in a plane crash, while enduring the ancient burden of waiting for a Sharps on the firing line to return home. The Black Sabre Chronicles conclude as they began, a history lesson cast in the form of well-told tales in the classic family-saga style. (July)

Forecast:Earlier books in the series have been adopted as tools for teaching African-American military history. The complete series will be a useful classroom resource, particularly for younger readers.