LitPick Review
In The Brewster Boys and the Eve of Infamy, protagonists Pete and Jon find themselves forcibly fleeing the clutches of a Nazi sympathizer, but what little solace they find in 1941 Hawaii is promptly ruptured by the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. Time-traveling henchmen swarm the island’s beaches, and a Japanese fleet prowls the Pacific. Entangled in the plot to thwart military history, the Brewster boys, along with cohorts Abby and Chuck, must dodge stray bullets and enemy forces in their struggle to right the past. Or is America destined for a future of vast alterations?
Opinion:
The Brewster Boys and the Eve of Infamy by Stephen Dittmer, a high-school history teacher, thrusts teenagers into the unfortunate position of having to view themselves objectively. Incompetence a prominent attribute of our two titular protagonists, for whom the sight of a bra elicits a quantity of glee to rival that of laughing gas, one cannot help but wonder as to the presence of vengeance in the author’s subconscious. Could the antics of Pete and Jon be manifestations of the less-than-stellar students riddling Dittmer’s career? In any case, these larger than life characters may not represent the pinnacle of literary achievement, but their temporal misadventures make for 214 pages of stereotyped delight.
