Nora's Army

by Denis Collins

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0931846838
• ISBN13: 9780931846830
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Washington Writers' Publishing House
• Length: 299 Pages

Customer Reviews

Historical fiction gem!

Collins seamlessly blends believable characters, race relations and riveting American history into a page turner. I highly recommend it.

A Star on the Horizon

The author presents his tale during a forgotten struggle in American History. A gathering of WWI vets pushing their government for promised benefits. The characters in some instances famous Americans and others faceless and poor. His female lead is a fascinating young Irish woman-beautiful, daring and intelligent. Collins' Nora brings us a unique view of Ireland and D.C. as she gropes her way through her first loves and a rebellious group of WW I veterans. She is unencumbered by America's racial morass and is attracted to a brilliant young African American man who was raised as white during his formative years. He is thrown out of his posh upbringing into the streets of D.C. He lives on his wits and dabbles in Marxism while supporting the veterans. I felt a link with Mark Twain's Huck Finn as this young man survives on his own in and around the capitol's many landmarks. The canoe trips down the Potomoc with the author's detailed understanding of the river topped off this wonderful book. It is captivating book that I couldn't put down. I hope Mr. Collins will give us more of Nora and her companions.

A Great Read

I loved this book, couldn't wait to pick it up again every evening. The story is well told and the characters rich and alive. I was crazy about the brassy heroine, Nora, the intriguing Walker and the young Eric Sevareid (and their love triangle which dangles all kinds of interesting possibilities before the reader). Most of all, as an almost native of DC, I got to know a city I love in an entirely new light. The author makes DC in the 1930's come alive, from the characters living there at the time to the urban landscape and the banks of the Potomac River. Found it fascinating.

BUY TWO COPIES OF THIS BOOK RIGHT NOW. I MEAN IT.

Washington, D.C., inspires a lot of excruciating writing, fictional and non-, of the "Let me tell you about this town..." sort, especially by scribblers whose chief goal in life has been to scrabble their way to and stay in the capital, however many broken fingernails and kneeholes it may cost. In Nora's Army, however, D.C. native Denis Collins delivers a walloping novel that pierces to the core of the true city -- not the confabulation of conspiracy and ambition supposedly limned in myriad mounds of tripe masquerading as Washington novels, but a meaty story and engaging characters and an inventive plot and direct yet lyrical language redolent of the real Washington, the one that exists outside the media-manipulated template through which too many people have come to view the nation's capital. By conjuring fictional yet genuine people and swirling them in his skull with historical figures and incontrovertible facts, Collins has built a book that stands with "Ragtime" and "Little Big Man" -- works of invention that deepen and improve on the reality they portray by illuminating it with imagination. Into the warp of the story he unfurls Collins weaves bits of Washingtoniana -- Child's Restaurant, Hopfenmaier's rendering plant, Murder Bay, Swampoodle, alley dwellings, Griffith Stadium -- long lost to all but the most dedicated of local memories in a town overrun by people who think everybody else is, like them, from somewhere else. But they're wrong. Denis Collins knows this so well, and he's written a book that honors his hometown as few have or could. The reason I urge readers to buy two copies is because they're going want to keep a copy and have one to give to someone they know who appreciates great American writing. -- Michael Dolan, author of "The American Porch: An Informal History of an Informal Place"

Nora's Army

This book was very well written, with well developed characters, a great story with historical background, it is wryly humorous, and illuminates an era and city of which I knew little. I made time to finish this novel!