John Shors’s second work of fiction, BESIDE A BURNING SEA,
is a novel of World War II, specifically the Pacific Theater. And
most moviegoers know what that means: John Wayne leading a doomed
Marine squad on a remote tropical island. Humphrey Bogart, on the
bridge of a minesweeper, rolling those two little steel balls in
his hand. Glenn Ford sweating out depth charges in a submarine
beneath Tokyo Bay.  Tough, hard-boiled stories about a
desperate struggle on the shores of the great ocean ---
that’s what you expect out of World War II fiction.

BESIDE A BURNING SEA has a lot of the elements you’d
expect in this particular genre: an escape from a horrifying
shipwreck, a treacherous spy, a hard-bitten Navy captain full of
doubt and regrets. It puts its marooned survivors on a nameless
atoll, which just happens to be a pawn in the grand strategic game
for control of the Pacific between the American and Japanese
navies. And the novel throws challenge after challenge to its
characters, from a downed Japanese pilot to a devastating
typhoon.

This sounds like the sort of red-meat tale that dominated the
movie houses of the ’40s and ’50s, but it’s more
of a romantic backdrop than anything else. At heart, BESIDE A
BURNING SEA is a love story --- a tender narrative involving an
injured Japanese soldier and an idealistic American nurse that
blooms out of a shared appreciation for the ancient and delicate
art of the haiku.

The Japanese soldier has a wounded leg and begins the story as a
prisoner of war aboard an American hospital ship. When Japanese
forces --- abetted by an on-board traitor --- sink the ship, the
prisoner saves the lives of two nurses. The younger nurse, Annie,
is attracted by his bravery and mysterious, wounded nature
–-- the result of witnessing carnage, bloodshed, rape and
mayhem during the occupation of China. She nurses him back to
health, as he teaches her about the finer points of sushi and
poetry. During the desperate and harrowing ordeal of shipwreck,
they cling to each other and the hope of survival and rescue.

BESIDE A BURNING SEA walks a difficult balance between two
traditions: the wartime adventure story and the lyrical romantic
relationship story. (Shors also throws in a parallel relationship
between the captain of the hospital ship and his newly-pregnant
wife, as well as a warm paternal tale involving an African-American
ship’s engineer and a wisecracking Fijian stowaway.) It takes
elements from both and at times deftly combines the relationship
threads with the nautical adventure threads.

But just as lovers in love can lose focus on the world around
them, Shors’s narrative occasionally loses sight of where it
wants to go and what it wants to do. The castaways who aren’t
directly involved in some kind of a relationship are ill-drawn, if
not totally peripheral to the story. There is perhaps a little too
much reliance on catchphrases, especially with the non-American
characters. And the villains --- both Japanese and American --- are
so broadly drawn as to be almost cartoonish; you would expect them
to twirl the waxed ends of their moustaches if they had them.

BESIDE A BURNING SEA has its faults, but they are
understandable; it’s almost what you’d expect, in a
way, in a novel that tries to accomplish so much and manages to
achieve most of it. Although Shors’s writing style verges on
the florid, it is exceptionally well-matched to the intricacies of
its romance, while still conveying the suspense of the shipwreck
and its aftermath. BESIDE A BURNING SEA won’t please either
armchair adventurers or bodice-ripping enthusiasts wholly, but it
will find, and deserves, a receptive and grateful audience.