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Title: Prisoners of War

Author: Steve Yarbrough

Narrator: Pete Bradbury

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-01-11

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

Award-winning author Steve Yarbrough has garnered widespread critical acclaim for his rich, powerful novels of the South. Kirkus Reviews calls Prisoners of War thoroughly impressive. In 1943, as German prisoners work the plantations of Mississippi delta country, Dan Timms roves the area selling goods for his uncle. Dans partner is L.C., a young black man. In a land where men dream of escape, the true danger for L.C. is the very society surrounding him.

Members Reviews:

About Prisoners of War

I recommend this to anyone. I especially recommend this to the generation that remembers the 40s. Like Yarbrough, we also had German POWs working on our farms (albeit in Kansas). More importantly, though, the probing of race dynamics is deeply sensitive and perceptive. Unfortunately, we can call this work timely--unfortunately because we still insist on damaging our young men in wars and we still suffer from racism. The problems of Mississippi are, regrettably, not isolated to any one locale. On a literary level, the book is just plain great writing. Yarbrough may be our generations best novelist.

Captors are "Prisoners of War" in sobering, cautionary novel

The wreckage of armed conflict litters the landscape of fictional Loring, Mississippi, in Steve Yarbrough's courageous and cautionary, "Prisoners of War." The novel's title is an apt one, and German POW's are not the only people held captive by the ravages of war. Dan Timms, not quite eighteen and chomping at the bit for his own involvement in World War II, possesses an innocence which shields him not only from the pernicious impact the previous world war had on the town but also inhibits his understanding of the subtle, but pervasive corruption, rampant in his community. Timms' struggle for emotional independence stands in bleak contrast to the ubiquitous pessimism and despair elsewhere.

Yarbrough presents several provocative theses about human behavior in "Prisoners," the most interesting of which posits that people have long outlived the moment of their deaths. Many of Yarbrough's characters are examples of the "living dead," wounded souls going through the motions of life until a climactic moment extinguishes them forever. The belligerent racist, Frank Holder, exemplifies this quality. Angry, bewildered and resentful over his enlisted son's untimely death, Holder's need for vengeance against a nameless, unconquerable force, extinguishes whatever limited capabilities he had to function as a decent man.

Dan's father and uncle fall victim to the same disability, but present different symptoms. World War I devoured Jimmy Del Timms, Dan's father. Cynical, uncommunicative and numbed, Dan's father stumbles through post-traumatic stress and suffers a disintegrating family. Jimmy Del's brother, Alvin, has betrayed conscience and community with his actions; aware of his own decadence, Alvin shrugs his shoulders at his own stench and revels in his role as a war profiteer.

Yarbrough presents the debasement of personality in times of extreme stress as a corollary to his central thesis. Even the German POW's, whose presence as seemingly tractable field laborers mollifies the struggling cotton farmers of the area, display a corrosion of the spirit. They secretively and ineptly plan an escape and turn on one of their own when the plot is foiled.