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Fiction. Literature. Historical Fiction. HTML:The year is 1901. Germany�??s navy is the second largest in the world; their army, the most powerful. But with the exception of a small piece of Africa and a few minor islands in the Pacific, Germany is without an empire. Kaiser Wilhelm II demands that the United States surrender its newly acquired territories: Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines. President McKinley indignantly refuses, so with the honor and economic future of the Reich at stake, the Kaiser launches an invasion of the United States, striking first on Long Island. Now the Americans, with their army largely disbanded, must defend the homeland. When McKinley suffers a fatal heart attack, the new commander in chief, Theodore Roosevelt, rallies to the cause, along with Confederate general James Longstreet. From the burning of Manhattan to the climactic Battle of Danbury, American forces face Europe�??s most potent war machine in a blazing contest of will against str… (more)
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Nevertheless, this is the limit of Conroy’s achievement, as having avoided one pitfall he ends up stumbling into others. Though the plot is engaging the writing is not, as Conroy’s insertion of details often gives passages the feel of a textbook. A similar problem exists with the characters; while his main hero and heroine are well fleshed out, the rest often come across as underdeveloped and stereotypical.
The greatest problem with Conroy’s novel, though, is its lack of respect for the historical background. Though this might seem counter-intuitive in a novel of alternative history, it is one of the keys to a successful alternative history novel. Yet Conroy seems uninterested in this. All too often he infuses his characters with more modern sensibilities (such as attitudes towards blacks and immigrant Germans) which no event could have created back then. Doing so robs them of their distinctive voice, and strong historical personalities such as Theodore Roosevelt seem to be little more than two-dimensional mouthpieces used to offer expositions on the plot. He also falls victim to name-dropping, introducing other famous figures no matter how implausible their participation in events might have been, apparently for no reason other than to give him an excuse to crowd his narrative with a “who’s-who” of historical characters.
As a consequence, the novel fails to live up to the promise of the plot. Readers drawn to the genre by the works of authors like Harry Turtledove will find Conroy’s novel a pale imitation of their best efforts. Though entertaining in some respects, it lacks the vivid evocation of an alternate past that makes such books compelling reading. I only hope that other, better writers of the field will be inspired to make similar bold leaps of the imagination when defining “what might have been.”