The Second Sun
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- ¥1,700
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- ¥1,700
発行者による作品情報
A taut, suspenseful historical thriller set in the months of WWII: Did Japan also have an atomic weapon, and did America bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki to pre-empt an attack on its fleet?
A masterful historical thriller set during the waning months of World War II, The Second Sun poses a provocative question: Did Japan test an atomic weapon, and did America know about it in advance of its own decision to drop two nuclear bombs?
March 1945: After a career of commanding destroyers in the Pacific theater of WWII, Captain Wolfe Bowen is based in Washington, DC, working for the Chief of Naval Operations. Bowen receives an urgent call from the commander of the naval shipyard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire: A German U-boat has been captured and brought to port. But what grabs Bowen’s attention is the presence of two Japanese civilians on board, along with the massive size of the U-boat itself. What these civilians know about the cargo of the U-boat, as well as its destination, begins a race against time that will change the course of history.
When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies, Harry Truman ascends to office with no prior knowledge of the Manhattan Project. Bowen is assigned a dangerous mission: Discover whether Japan has the technology to produce an atomic weapon, and find out how close the desperate enemy is to deploying it. Working with a small team—including Captain Villem Amherst Van Rensselaer, part of the inner circle on the Manhattan Project, and Lieutenant Commander Janet Waring, a naval intelligence officer and skilled translator of Japanese—Bowen must report back to President Truman with the information that will transform the war—and the world.
Brilliantly imagined and deeply informed by P. T. Deutermann’s long history as a navy captain, as well as his family’s service in the Pacific theater, The Second Sun is a compelling novel timed for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This suspenseful historical thriller from Deutermann (Iwo, 26 Charlie) hinges on an intriguing question: was Japan working on its own atomic bomb in the waning days of WWII? It's the spring of 1945; Germany has been defeated, but Japan fights on. A surrendered German U-boat is escorted into the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine with a full crew, and U.S. Navy captain Wolfe Bowen, who works for the Navy's strategic planning committee, climbs aboard. He discovers that the submarine has a secret deck with containers of unrefined U-238 uranium that the Germans planned to send to Japan for use in their weapons program. Bowen's superiors then clue him in to America's greatest secret: the Manhattan Project, which has just produced two atomic bombs. Soon, President Truman assigns Bowen to investigate Japan's program and its relevance to the U.S.'s decision to drop the weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Deutermann's characters, both real and fictional, are well drawn, complex, and sympathetic; he makes a stirring moral dilemma out of Bowen's assignment and generates thrilling romantic heat between him and Lt. Commander Janet Waring, who's assigned to help translate his work into Japanese. Deutermann's fans and WWII buffs alike will enjoy this gripping treatment of an underexplored aspect of the war.
