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REVIEWS

"Four plot lines are expertly interwoven to create a love story-cum-thriller in the latest work by veteran romance author Brockmann (Bodyguard), winner of two Romantic Times Career Achievement Awards and a two-time RITA finalist. Navy SEAL Lt. Tom Paoletti, on medical leave after a near-fatal head injury, returns to his New England hometown and is drawn into an unresolved relationship with the girl he left behind. Kelly Ashton, now a pediatrician, is caring for her dying father when Tom returns to disrupt -- and enrich -- her life. Then Tom glimpses a terrorist he once pursued who's supposed to be dead, but his antagonistic superiors attribute the unlikely sighting to his head injury. Brockmann keeps the tension high, while also revealing the heartbreaking wartime secret shared by Kelly's father and Tom's beloved uncle. Another subplot involving Tom's niece also plays nicely into the dramatic finale as Tom and a makeshift team must take on terrorist bombers unaided. With its shift in focus from romance to the action subplot, this novel would make a terrific movie."  Publishers Weekly

"Suzanne Brockmann has been a consistently excellent storyteller since she first arrived on the fiction scene.  However, in THE UNSUNG HERO she takes a quantum leap forward with a novel that is richly textured, tenderly touching and utterly exciting.  This is one book you will be unable to put down or forget!" 4 and 1/2 Star Gold Medal and Top Pick  -- Jill M. Smith, Romantic Times Magazine

"Readers will be singing Suzanne Brockmann's praises after reading her Ballantine June contemporary THE UNSUNG HERO. This novel is quite simply a romantic MASTERPIECE! It should be entitled THE UNSUNG HEROES since there are so many heroes and heroines to fall in love with: a heroic Navy SEAL, a dedicated pediatrician/devoted daughter, two brave feisty World War II veterans, a saintly French resistance fighter, a quirky compassionate teenage girl and a mature artistic college boy. Perhaps the greatest unsung hero of all is Ms. Brockmann herself, who absolutely sets the standard for excellence in women's fiction! THE UNSUNG HERO elevates her writing to a new plateau and deserves to make all the bestseller lists!"  Patricia Rouse, Romantic Times Columnist

“You can't choose who you love, but you can waste it. That's the hard lesson learned by many of the people involved in this stirring and unforgettable military romance about the men of the US Navy SEALS.  
    "Lt. Tom Paoletti has returned to his home town of Baldwin's Bridge (near Boston) to recuperate from a near-fatal head injury sustained on his last dangerous mission. When he glimpses a man who reminds him of the Merchant, a supposedly dead terrorist he's been tracking for years, Tom fears he's losing it for sure. Especially when he can't convince his commanding officer of the sighting. Yeah, just what one of the powers-that-be would like is to label Tom unfit and disband the elite group of SEALS under his command.  
    "Staying with his Uncle Joe, Tom is once again in close proximity to the girl next door (and the girl of his dreams), Kelly Ashton, a pediatrician who's come home to care for her dying father, Charles Ashton. Charles and his Uncle Joe have been the best of friends since they fought together in World War II. But they're at bitter odds over some deeply held secret they've kept all these years (which we get to learn about through flashbacks), and it threatens to destroy their friendship on the eve of a big 55th anniversary celebration the town is throwing for their unit. 
    "As Tom and Kelly work to resolve the conflict between the two older men, they also finally succumb to the mutual attraction they've always had for each other. Though they both claim it's only sex and for only as long as they're in town, will they be able to walk away from it?  
    "When Tom again spots the Merchant, he has no choice. With help from several of his most loyal men, as well as Charles, Joe and Kelly, he decides he must take care of the situation, whatever the outcome.  Included in the heroics are Tom's niece and her nerdy, computer geek boy friend (who have their own touching story told throughout), and the resolution is one that will touch your heart and your soul.  
    "Ms. Brockmann scores again (big-time)! as she creates a stellar cast of realistic, mature characters in a complex, multilayered storyline. The writer involves the reader in a gamut of emotions from sweet and funny, to sensual and sexy, to suspenseful and deeply moving - a page-turner from start to finish. Whether you like your heroes in uniform or not, don't miss this totally awesome book. I loved it! And it's just the first book in a new ongoing series from this highly talented author."  Tanzey Cutter, The Old Book Barn Gazette

"Suzanne, you've really done it this time!  What a book!  Please pardon the exclamation marks, but it's not easy to express the satisfaction I found in THE UNSUNG HERO without 'em.  When I read BODYGUARD, I was pretty sure you'd written the best book you've ever done...and now you've gone and made me out a liar.  Thanks for a wonderful story, a keeper in every sense of the word."  Merry Cutler, Annie's Book Stop

Note From Suz: I've been fascinated by World War II since before I can remember.  I was born in 1960, only fifteen years after the end of the war, but when I was a kid it seemed like ancient history.  And yet I was aware of the fact that many of the men and women around me had not only lived through that tumultuous time, but had played an important part in it.  My grandmother's cousin, Elise, had worked for the U.S. Navy, as a supervisor in an ammunitions testing facility.  The town photographer -- who was a little strange and who lived by himself in a ramshackle house near Bishop's Orchards -- had actually survived the Death March in Bataan.  My uncles, Fred and Jack, both served in France, and actually ran into each other in Paris, purely by luck!

At age eleven and twelve, I read the entire section of the stacks in the library devoted to the history of the Second World War.  I read "The Great Escape."  I read "The Man Who Never Was."  I read about the war in the Pacific, about the terrors of the German death camps, about the Blitzkrieg in Europe.  I read about vast battles -- the ongoing battle for the skies between the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force that became known as the Battle of Britain, the enormous naval engagement of the Battle of Midway.  Pearl Harbor, Anzio, Iwo Jima, Dunkirk, Denmark, Normandy, Ardennes -- I read of the military strategies, the defeats, the victories.  And I also read of the millions of small acts of heroism, the intimate and remarkable stories of the ordinary men and woman who lived and breathed and fought in those places, whether they wanted to or not, men and women who made a difference and enabled the Allies to defeat Hitler and the Axis.

And I'm still in awe.

Many people who lived through the War came home and didn't say a single word about it.  All those acts of heroism and bravery were often whittled down to a single, unremarkable sentence:  "You did what you had to do."

Two of my characters in THE UNSUNG HERO were young men during that time -- two young American men, Charles Ashton and Joe Paoletti, who found themselves in Nazi occupied France in 1944, during the weeks immediately following the "D-Day" Invasion of Normandy.  Their story, told in flashbacks, is an important subplot in my book.  When THE UNSUNG HERO takes place, in August, 2000, both of those men are elderly, but they play a vital part in the contemporary action, too, even though both still aren't talking about the ordeal they lived through more than fifty-five years earlier. 

THE UNSUNG HERO will be out in June, 2000 -- just in time for the RWA National Conference in Washington, D.C.  I'll keep you posted via email newsletter as to the arrival date for Advance Review Copies! 

www.randomhouse.com/BB/loveletters

Click here for an excerpt from THE UNSUNG HERO.