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WARTIME ON THE CARQUINEZ STRAITS
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Rumors of Peace
by Ella Leffland; Perennial Library,
Harper & Row  $12 (paper) 1985
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Review by Kathy Goldin
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     Sometimes old friends are the best friends.  The media's coverage of the 
50th anniversary of D-Day in June drew me back to reread _Rumors of Peace_.  
This coming of age novel captures the spirit of a young girl who is trying 
to make sense of a world at war.  The book takes us from the bombing of Pearl 
Harbor to the bombing of Hiroshima.  The small town is Mendoza (a thinly
disguised Martinez).  Ms. Leffland beautifully evokes the realities of 
growing up in this small oil-refining town at the edge of Suisan Bay, thirty 
miles from San Francisco.
     Suse Hansen is the narrator and heroine, a tomboy of eleven with
calluses on her palms who wants to be a trapeze artist. This is how the war
enters her life:  she is on her way home from Sunday school, loitering in
the creek on  a sunny day.
     "Over the water's roar I heard something odd--shouting, but not the 
shouting of kids at play.  It was a full-bodied adult voice, screaming out at 
a run.  Swinging around, I stared up the bank at the trees.  Whoever it was 
was running through the trees toward the footbridge, and suddenly, as my eyes 
widened, he burst into view and thundered onto the boards, a large man in 
full military uniform, swinging a rifle to his shoulder.
     'Invasion?' he cried.  'Seek shelter.  Seek shelter!'  And he fired into 
the air.  The report exploded through the gorge, jolting me from my feet.  I 
felt a massive, icy engulfment, a deafening commotion, and when my head broke 
surface I was being shot downstream like one of my twigs."
     Suse is a successful sixth grader, but the events of December 7, 1941 
turn her into a terrified girl, too frightened to sleep and so preoccupied 
with the threat of invasion that her schoolwork suffers.  She stays awake at 
night, listening for the sound of approaching enemy planes; she hears 
soldier-laden Army trucks go by, and the rumbling fills her with dread.  The 
night blackouts begin December 8.  She said to a classmate, casually, "I 
guess they'll be coming to bomb us," and he yelled in reply, "Let 'em try!"   
  Ms. Leffland uses headlines from newspapers to frame what is happening  in
this Danish family's small world.  Suse's older sister, Karla, seems 
unconcerned with the war; she is interested in pursuing her art studies.  
High school student Peter is anxious to join the war effort as a soldier and 
tries to reassure his worried little sister.
     Meanwhile, Suse is confused by her growing hatred for the enemy, Japan.  
But does that mean the florist, Mr. Nagai?  The evil Mussolini and Hitler; 
does that mean her friends Ezio and Mario Pelegrino?  Her father hates 
Germans, but he is polite and friendly to Mr. Kroeger, their baker.      
Suse reads the San Francisco papers to keep up with the war news, and pesters
family and friends with questions.  She had not realized that within a ten-
mile radius stood Shell Oil, Standard Oil, Union Oil, the Hercules Powder
Plant, the Benicia Arsenal, the Port Chicago Ammunition Dump and Mare Island
Navy Yard. Sandbags go up around the Sheriff's Office, barrage balloons over
Carquinez Strait; the "Japs' are removed to the internment camps, and those
of Italian ancestry have to leave military zones.  The Pelegrinos move in
with relatives in San Ramon, and Mr. Nagai disappears.      
Suse's failing grades brought her a surprise when she started junior  high.
She was in the dumbbell class, with "loud, messy Eudene who had a screw
loose, and Dumb Donny Woodall."  A new student, Peggy Hatton became a friend.
"We did not speak and exchanged only the brief, cool look of people who
have been brought together on the basis of inadequacy."  Suse meets Helen 
Maria, Peggy's older sister who is a senior at UC Berkeley, and must be a
genius, since she's only fifteen.  The friendship moves from a loose
partnership of rebels to distance and misunderstanding, as Peggy goes on a
diet, joins the 'in' crowd and discovers boys.  Suse becomes a friend of
Helen Maria, and finds a new world.  Visiting Helen Maria in her boarding 
house in Berkeley, Suse meets Egon Kravitz.
     Through conversations and a hesitant correspondence with Egon, a Jewish 
refugee from Berlin, Suse reveals her fears about the war, and her wish to 
understand more about what is going on in the world.  Egon answers her 
questions and takes her seriously, but gently makes it clear that although 
he is her friend, he will return to Germany as soon as the war is over, and
that is the way it is.
     Ms Leffland, skillfully exploring her abiding interest in war, evil and 
moral choices, closes the book with Suse's last visit to Berkeley, in the 
summer of 1945.  She joins in a joyful going-away party for Helen Maria, who
is going to Oxford.  After a great deal of music and wine, the friends sleep
late the next day, and they are still a bit groggy when word comes over the
radio about Hiroshima.
     Once again, Suse is left with no one to understand her fear and dread.  
She decides to cut her visit to Helen Maria short, and go find Egon on her 
own.  She goes to the address written on his letters, finds him, and says:    
 "I came because of the bomb."
     "Do you want the world to blow up?"
     "No, My God, no."
     "Then maybe you should think that it won't."
     Ella Leffland followed this, her first novel, with three greatly 
acclaimed novels; _Love Out of Season_, _Mrs. Munck, and The Knight_, _Death 
Wanda the Devil_, as well as an equally praised collection of short stories, 
_Last Courtesies_.