She Flew No Flags

Manley's intermittently interesting, semiautobiographical first novel, about an American family's ocean voyage from India to California during WWII, suffers from double vision. The reader is invited to examine the events through the eyes of 10-year-old Janet Baylor, usually the first-person narrator; frequently, however, the narrator seems to be an adult, looking back at a distant past and using phrases like ``in those days'' to fix the time. This conflation of the narrator's roles proves distancing, and the plot itself resembles that of a '40s wartime movie (passengers in disguise; small tests of moral courage). However, the author serves up a wealth of atmospheric details-the blackout conditions aboard the ship (``You must NEVER throw anything overboard... not even a cigarette butt''), the drills (``The General Quarters alarm was a piercing KOO-EEE-YOO! like a giant prehistoric bird in pain''); descriptions of the American food so new to Janet-and the strength of her prose raises expectations for future works. Ages 10-14. (Apr.)