The Coldest Night
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Robert Olmstead. (2013). The Coldest Night. Algonquin Books.

Robert Olmstead. 2013. The Coldest Night. Algonquin Books.

Robert Olmstead, The Coldest Night. Algonquin Books, 2013.

Robert Olmstead. The Coldest Night. Algonquin Books, 2013.

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1. • value: War
2. • value: romance
3. • value: Battlefield
4. • value: South
5. • value: warfare
6. • value: disability
7. • value: kidnapping
8. • value: class
9. • value: army
10. • value: love
11. • value: Coming of age
12. • value: elope
13. • value: Military
14. • value: trauma
15. • value: Korea
16. • value: Soldier
17. • value: Historical Fiction
18. • value: Korean War
19. • value: guilt
20. • value: battle
21. • value: New Orleans
22. • value: Marines
23. • value: violence
24. • value: Veteran
25. • value: dead mother
26. • value: country boy
27. • value: combat veteran
28. • value: wounded soldier
29. • value: injured soldier
30. • value: controlling parents
31. • value: chosin reservoir
32. • value: War Injuries
33. • value: winter warfare

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Olmstead, Robert
   • bioText: Robert Olmstead is the author of seven previous books. Coal Black Horse was the winner of the Heartland Prize for Fiction and the Ohioana Award, and was a #1 Book Sense pick and a Border's Discover pick. Far Bright Star was the winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEA grant, and is a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University.
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Algonquin Books

publishDate

2013-04-16T00:00:00Z

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title

The Coldest Night

fullDescription

Henry Childs is just seventeen when he falls into a love affair so intense it nearly destroys him. To escape the wrath of the young girl's father, Henry joins the Marines, arriving in Korea on the eve of the brutal battle of the Chosin Reservoir—the defining moment of the Korean War. There he confronts an enemy force far beyond the scope of his imagining, but the challenges he meets upon his return home, scarred and haunted, are greater by far. 
From the steamy streets of New Orleans to the bone-chilling Korean landscape, award-winning author Robert Olmstead takes us into one of the most physically challenging battles in history and, with just as much intensity, into an electrifying, all-consuming love affair. 

reviews

1. • premium: True
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     Starred review from February 13, 2012
     Olmstead’s (Far Bright Star) elegiac, gritty coming-of-age novel is presented in three dramatic sections: Part I finds 17-year-old Henry Childs living with his mother, a nurse, in Appalachia, W.Va., during the spring of 1950. His father largely absent, Henry excels at baseball and grooms horses. He falls in love with the fanciful Mercy, the older daughter of a dictatorial judge, and the two elope to New Orleans, where he works as a janitor until Mercy’s vindictive brother arrives to take her back. Part II begins with the heartbroken Henry enlisting as a Marine “hunter,” armed with the fierce Browning Automatic, and dispatched to Korea, where he participates in the savage and decisive Chosin Reservoir campaign in frozen northeastern Korea. Snippets of male banter help to leaven the hellish brutality endured by Henry and fellow sniper pal Lew, a veteran of WWII. One year later, Part III opens with the shell-shocked Henry, only a bit older but significantly transformed, returning home to W. Va. up the Kanawha River, where the pain of his mounting personal losses threatens to overwhelm his sanity. Despite the narrative’s darkening vision (“The Lord is a man of war,” says Henry), enough redemption rescues Olmstead’s powerful, desolate, and well-crafted novel from becoming oppressively bleak.

2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     February 15, 2012
     

     A combination of war novel and love story, this work follows Henry, a young man in 1950 West Virginia, as he falls for a wealthy young woman and runs away with her to New Orleans. When their affair is violently interrupted by her family, Henry enlists in the marines. The Korean War is raging, and Henry experiences an epic battle, gruesome wounds, and unforgettable horrors. Although the book is framed by a love affair, the heart of it--and where the narrative is most gripping--is Henry's experience in combat. Olmstead (Coal Black Horse) has a spare, direct style that is most effective in the brilliant, engrossing combat descriptions and ironic marine banter. In the West Virginia scenes, the clipped conversations of the characters are more noticeably stylized. VERDICT A novel of the early 1950s and the Korean War that will appeal to readers of literary fiction.--John R. Cecil, Austin, TX

     Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

3. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     February 15, 2012
     It's extremes that rivet us in Olmstead's searing seventh novel: the heaven of first love; the hell of the battlefield. Henry Childs grew up in the mountains of West Virginia, raised by his grandfather and his sweet-natured mother Clemmie. (The mystery of his never-mentioned father is a late-revelation shocker.) His forebears were soldiers and horsemen, but they've lost their land, and Clemmie must move with Henry to the city, Charleston. In 1950 Henry is a high-school junior with a passion for horses and baseball. He helps out at some stables where he meets Mercy. She comes from money and is university-bound, while Henry seems headed for a factory. The attraction between these virgins is mutual and overwhelming; from the outset their sex is a rapt communication. Henry is warned off by her father and brother. The lovers elope to New Orleans, where an apartment is waiting for them, courtesy of Mercy's accommodating aunt. They make it their Eden. Father and brother come to expel them, abducting Mercy, giving Henry a final warning. Though underage, he enlists as a Marine and is sent to Korea. He does recon with Lew, a gruff World War II vet. Quite unsentimentally, a bond develops, a wise-guy routine. The cold is arctic. The Chinese come at night, waves of them. It's kill or be killed; answer atrocity with atrocity. In New Orleans we ached because we feared what was happening had to end; in Korea we ache because we fear it never will. Olmstead's extraordinary language gives us new eyes. An exceptionally fine study of love, war and the double-edged role of memory, which can both sustain and destroy. Prize-winning material.

     COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     February 15, 2012
     West Virginia high-school students Henry and Mercy fall madly in love, but Mercy's wealthy, willful father warns Henry to keep away. The teens flee their homes and go to New Orleans. But Mercy's father and older brother track them down, nearly kill Henry, and take Mercy away. When he recovers, Henry joins the marines and finds himself in Korea when a massive Red Chinese army attacks in human wave assaults at the Chosin Reservoir, the brutal, days-long battle that was fought in temperatures that reached 30 degrees below zero. Henry barely survives, and when he returns to West Virginia, he is emotionally aged, despite still being too young to buy a drink legally. Olmstead employs different authorial voices to shape the story. At times the tone is mythic, at times surreal. This is understandable, because Henry, despite being introspective, is simply too callow to cope with overwhelming first love, lost love, and the battlefield savagery he took part in and endured. The Coldest Night is powerful, and often beautiful, storytelling.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

popularity

468

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shortDescription

Henry Childs is just seventeen when he falls into a love affair so intense it nearly destroys him. To escape the wrath of the young girl's father, Henry joins the Marines, arriving in Korea on the eve of the brutal battle of the Chosin Reservoir—the defining moment of the Korean War. There he confronts an enemy force far beyond the scope of his imagining, but the challenges he meets upon his return home, scarred and haunted, are greater by far. 
From the steamy streets of New Orleans to the bone-chilling Korean landscape, award-winning author Robert Olmstead takes us into one of the most physically challenging battles in history and, with just as much intensity, into an electrifying, all-consuming love affair. 

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