Walter's Purple Heart

by Catherine Ryan Hyde Narrated by Kirby Heyborne

Overview

Michael Steeb is an aimless twenty-one-year-old pot farmer in Central California in the 1980s. He has no real plans or interests . . . until the day he connects with memories of a life that seems to belong to someone else. That "spirit" is Walter, a young American soldier killed in World War II.



Michael's task is the near-impossible: to lead Walter's family to closure and peace, to deliver the real truth behind Walter's Purple Heart, and to somehow achieve the forgiveness absent for so many years so Walter can move on. Michael sets out to find Walter's best friend, Andrew, and Mary Ann, the fiancée Walter left behind. Mary Ann recognizes Walter in Michael immediately. But Andrew sets out to prove that Michael is the worst sort of con man.



Narrated in large part by Walter from beyond the grave, Walter's Purple Heart is a fast-paced war drama and a deeply felt romance, with a unique twist on the prospect of multiple lives. Catherine Ryan Hyde paints an enduring portrait of a life prematurely lost, and the endless ripples of consequence to those who loved him, in a microcosm that sheds light on the true gravity of war.

Editorial Reviews

As in her hit novel Pay It Forward, Hyde narrates her latest book from the perspectives of several characters. The shifts in point of view are more intrusive than enlightening, and they ultimately divert the reader's attention. Forty years after Walter Crowley is savagely killed in World War II, his spirit contacts a young marijuana farmer named Michael Steeb through a Ouija board. Walter takes over Michael's body in order to patch things up with an old war buddy, Andrew, who married Walter's fiancée, Mary Ann, after his death. In addition to reconciling with Andrew, Walter uses Michael to seduce Mary Ann, who is well over sixty years old when they are reunited. When Hyde finally reveals why Walter carries a post-mortem grudge against Andrew, and why he has sought out the woman he admittedly loved less than his mother's lemon pie when he was alive, the answers are so anticlimactic and artificial that they hardly warrant all the authorial cleverness.
—Susan Tekulve

Publishers Weekly

Though the much-hyped movie version of Pay It Forward sank into box-office doldrums soon after its release, Hyde still soars, turning out another heartwarming if melodramatic tale. In her fourth novel, the eponymous Walter is dead, killed by a Japanese sniper at Guadalcanal in 1942. Forty years later, his spirit comes back and declares, "Nobody in this story is going anywhere without me." By that, he means his high school sweetheart, a wartime buddy, and the very confused California marijuana farmer he chooses as his earthly host. Twenty-one-year-old pot enthusiast Michael Steeb unexpectedly meets Walter's spirit one day while fooling around with a Ouija board. Michael freaks out, and it takes Walter some time to convince Michael that his spirit is real and that Michael must help him unravel a 40-year-old mystery. Michael and Walter finally become friends, and Walter sends Michael to New Mexico to locate his wartime sweetheart, Mary Ann, and his old army buddy, Andrew. They have been married 38 years and each has powerful memories of Walter, but Walter has a few hard questions he wants to ask them. It's a bit disconcerting when Michael, channeling Walter, romances the 60-something Mary Ann, but the power of human emotion in its purest form wins out over physical barriers. Though she doesn't skimp on the schmaltz, Hyde has a sure touch with affairs of the heart. (Apr. 10) Forecast: It's hard to say whether the big-screen fate of Pay It Forward will help or hinder Hyde's latest, but her higher profile will likely attract at least a few extra readers. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Walter died in battle 40 years ago, but never mind; he's back asking down-and-out Michael to track down his war buddy. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Reincarnation is at the core of this story that unfolds through the eyes of four characters. Walter was a soldier in World War II who died during battle and whose spirit is not ready to leave Earth. Andrew is Walter's best friend, and the one who convinced him to enlist in the war. Michael is his reincarnation, who 40 years later at the age of 21 is an aimless pot farmer in California. Finally, there is Mary Ann, Walter's fianc e, who married Andrew. One evening, Walter awakens Michael's perception of his former self by communicating with him through a Ouija board and asks for help with some unfinished business that he left behind. If the novel's premise seems complicated in soap-opera-like proportions, it is. Hyde, however, is a masterful storyteller. Thoroughly engrossing, the book does not allow for skipping a single page as she keeps the momentum up by surprising readers with new details about Walter's life throughout the story. They add to the mystery of why the young man's spirit remains earthbound and keep readers guessing about what it will take for him to cross over to the other side. Both sentimental and heartwarming, this novel delivers all the ingredients for a day of leisure reading.-Julie Dasso, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Hyde perfects the heart-string-pulling techniques of Pay It Forward (2000), this time in a story about a WWII soldier reincarnated in the body of a free-spirited 21-year-old California man who tracks down the soldier's now elderly old buddy and best girl-to humorous, romantic effect. "Usually when the hero dies the story is over," Walter Crowley says in his gee-gosh manner in the first chapter. Walter is a dead WWII hero from Ocean City, New Jersey, who enlisted in 1942 with his best buddy from high school, Andrew Whittaker, and gained a posthumous Purple Heart for bravery. Except that 40 years later Walter is "stuck" in the spirit world, he tells us, harboring grudges and feeling undeserving of his Purple Heart because of the cowardice he exhibited during that moment of crisis. Walter haunts a pot-smoking, sax-playing kid-Michael Steeb-to get him to contact the original Andrew, now in his 60s and living in Albuquerque, in order to set straight the true story behind Walter's death in Guadalcanal-and to find out how Andrew had the gumption to marry Walter's fetching red-haired fiancee, Mary Ann. Michael Steeb learns that he carries all of Walter's memories, and the ones from Walter's courtship of Mary Ann four decades before induce Michael to fall in love with her all over again, causing enormous havoc within the aged and bitter Andrew and various onlookers who are horrified at the sight of a sixtysomething lady kissing a mere kid. However absurd the premise, Hyde hooks her reader through artless evocation of an earlier, innocent, patriotic era a la Our Town. "I'd like to tell you that I properly appreciated every single moment of the life I was given," Walter says, echoing the wholesomegoodness of almost everyone here. Shamelessly sentimental, although many will fall for Hyde's tidy, quick-going, mannerist paragraphs.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170824779
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	04/11/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter Three

Walter

Did you think I was gone?

No chance of that. If death was the end of me, this story would be over.

Nobody in this story is going anywhere without me. They don't know enough, don't know where to go.

I don't mean to insult these people, sounding like I'm the only one who knows anything. I mean, these people are my friends. It's just that, when you're alive...Oh, boy. How do I say this without offending everybody? When you're alive, you don't know squat. It's like being lost in the woods. You don't see the woods, and you don't really know where you are. It's like you just see the trees right around you, and you have no idea what part of the forest it is, or how it fits in with the rest of the forest. If you're walking around trying to get found, you probably don't even know if you've seen these particular trees before. No perspective, you know? No overview.

I guess I sound prejudiced against the living, and maybe in some ways I am. When you've done both and you know it, it's hard not to see what's what.

I will say this, though. A few living people have some kind of breakthrough knowing. For lack of a better expression. It's like some part of them knows the whole forest, and every now and then they can operate out of that part of themselves. But they can't do it all the time, and they could never explain it to you.

So even though it has limited uses, I still have to give credit where credit is due and admit that some living people are knowers.

Mary Ann used to be that way. That's why the little incident in the backseat of my dad's Ford just before I shipped out. I didn't see it like that at the time. I wasn't much of a knower myself, back then.

But she knew I wasn't coming back.

I wonder if she's still got that. I hope so. It'll help a lot, if she does. But it's a funny thing, knowing. It's the first thing to get knocked out of you. Life has a way of finding that part of you and taking it back.

I'll tell you who used to be a great knower was Bobby. You won't meet him, because he's dead. Really dead, not stuck like me. He was a buddy of Andrew's and mine on the island. Good guy, Bobby.

Not long after we land, he goes off and buys a native hooker for the four of us. Yeah, that was a good example of what I'm talking about. That was a knowing thing, and maybe I saw it that way when it happened, even though I was obviously alive at the time.

There were four of us that were real close on the island. The four musketeers, that's what we called ourselves. Me, Andrew, Bobby, and Jay.

Anyway, the thing with the hooker. This is where I am right now. I feel guilty calling her that, even though it's what she is, because she looks about sixteen, and I keep imagining that if the Japs and the GIs had never landed, she might've just been a girl like any other — like your daughter or your sister.

Anyway, she isn't.

She costs Bobby his gold pinky ring. That pays for all four of us. Nice gesture, only I feel pretty inclined to give it a miss. It's one of those things, though, you have to take into account what your musketeers will say, so I go in for my share.

She's lying on Bobby's jacket in the dusk, in the jungle. Wearing nothing more than that ring on her middle finger. She's holding her hand out at arm's length, like to admire the look. I know how many guys have been in to see her already, but she doesn't look like she knows. She looks like she forgot to notice. I'm standing there in front of her, and all she can do is look at the ring.

She has this vulnerability about her that I think I'm supposed to find exciting, only it doesn't work on me. Lots of things that are supposed to work on guys don't work on me. I hope I never find out why.

It makes me feel sad.

But I do it anyway, so I can honestly say I did. It's a present, you know? It's a guy thing.

The whole time, she's looking over my shoulder at her outstretched hand. At least she's honest about what's important to her.

Anyway, I don't take up too much of her time, so I guess I shouldn't feel too bad.

Then, when it's over, I have a laugh to myself, thinking how Andrew calls this Anticlimax Island, except for different reasons.

Not that the first time was any great shakes, or lasted much longer, but at least I knew my girl was there because she liked me. Now that I think about it, though, I had to give Mary Ann a ring, too.

So, anyway. About the knowing thing. So I go back to Bobby and I say, "Hey, thanks, buddy, that was just the ticket."

Pretty much lying.

He says, "Well, it's like this, Crow." That's what they call me, Crow. He says, "We're going back to the hill tomorrow, and you just never know." He says, "If we don't get some now, maybe we won't be able to later. And you got to get you some at least once before you die." He says, "Damn shame to have to go to heaven and tell Saint Peter you forgot to live while you had the chance."

Well, this kind of gets my attention, because how do you suppose he got it in his head that I never did?

So I go back to Andrew, and I say, "What the hell, buddy, did you tell Bobby I was a virgin?"

Andrew says, "Hey, we're all in the same boat, it's nothing you need to be ashamed of."

Because, you see, I still hadn't gotten around to telling him about Mary Ann.

More on that later. That's a whole thing. Don't even get me started on that now.

So not two days down the pike we're charging a cave. Three of us guys go running in at a time, in waves, and I trip over something in the dark and go flying. Whatever it is, I figure it must've saved my life, for the moment, because before I can get up and get back into combat, it's all over. Score one for the U.S. of A.

Hutch comes in with a big, battery-powered light so we can evacuate our dead and wounded.

So then I see what I tripped over. Bobby.

Run through with a bayonet. Eyes like glass, staring up at the cave ceiling. Staring at nothing.

And my first thought — call it sick if you will — is, At least he got laid first.

And then my second thought is, How'd he know? Who told him it was time?

And then my third thought is that I'm going to throw up and I do.

See, the point of that story is that Bobby was a knower. I wonder sometimes if he was always like that, or if it was just because he was so close. When you're that close to the moment you're going to die, it gets to be like a thin curtain between the two things, the living thing and the dying one, and you can see a lot if you try.

But Mary Ann is living a long life, and she knew things young. Some people do.

Michael, now he presents a challenge. He knows nothing, and he doesn't even mind that. He's not even paying attention. I know I talk about him like he isn't me. And we all know he is. But still. He's going to take some working on.

But then, I've got all the time in the world, right? No buses to catch. No pressing engagements. What better have I got to do?

Copyright © 2002 by Catherine Ryan Hyde

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