Silver Wings, Iron Cross

Lieutenant Karl Hagan, a U.S. Army Air Force pilot in WWII, is shot down in enemy territory. Oberleutnant Wilhelm Albrecht, executive officer on board a German U-boat, decides he's had enough of war. Both men are fighting for their lives, and only by working together do Hagan and Albrecht have a chance of survival. There have been plenty of stories about enemies who are forced to put their differences aside in order to survive (Barry B. Longyear's novella Enemy Mine, for example, or the 1958 film The Defiant Ones), and Young stacks the deck a bit here by making the American character a German immigrant--Hagan has family in Germany, and he speaks the language--but overall this is a solidly constructed, effectively written novel that gives readers a tactile sense of what it might have been like for two young men on opposite sides trying to escape the madness of war.

This exciting WWII thriller from Young (The Hunters) follows the careers of two enemies, Lt. Karl Hagan, an American B-17 pilot, and Oberleutnant Wilhelm Albrecht, second in command of the German submarine U-351. Hagan, who's of German heritage, is feeling tremendously conflicted about his last assigned mission, because it's a bombing run over Bremen, Germany, where his aunt and uncle live, but of course he obeys orders. After Albrecht receives a suicide order for the U-351 and his men while the boat's in dry dock in Bremen, he decides to desert during the B-17 raid on the city. Hagan's plane is shot down, and he parachutes into Germany. In an unlikely twist, Hagan links up with Albrecht and the two of them go on the run together, but Young makes it work thanks to authentic detail and plenty of convincing background information on the two principals as well as on almost every one of the secondary characters. Genre fans will find a lot to like. Agent: Michael Carlisle, Inkwell Management. (June)