During a recent trip to Eastern Washington, I listened to the audiobook version of Saboteur by Dean Hughes. Dean Hughes writes a lot of books for the LDS community, most of them with war themes. He’s best known for his Children of the Promise series. Much like that series, this book takes place during World War II.
Basic Overview
This was a good book overall. It follows two main storylines, Andy Gledhill’s as a spy in France, and his loved ones back home in the small town of Delta, Utah. Andy deals with issues such as the death of people that he knows and has come to trust, his own demons concerned with the people he’s killed as part of the war, and his own testimony. His mom is from France, and Andy has spent time there. Because of that, he can speak French, a skill that is very valuable as he works with the French Resistance.
Back home, people deal with issues such as worrying about Andy, racism concerned with the internment camp near their home, and the other ways that war has affected their community. While Andy no longer feels worthy of marrying a good, clean LDS girl because of the things that he’s done during the war, his girlfriend back home, Whisper, feels like he no longer loves her.
Clean or Not?
In many cases, this book would be considered “clean.” It does have at least one use of the “d-word,” and there are some words that are considered swear words in England but that are not swear words in the United States. As far as I remember, all of that’s in the first few chapters, and then after that, the language is clean. Because this is a book targeted at an LDS audience and because it was published by Deseret Book, even that amount of swearing was a bit surprising.
The violence is fairly mild for a war novel. You get what’s going on without super graphic descriptions. I have read other World War II that went into less detail when it came to violence, though. There is a chapter (maybe even two chapters) where there is some torture going on and talk of torture. While it doesn’t get super gruesome, it could be a bit much for some readers. It did make me cringe a bit.
When it comes to sexual content, there are no sex scenes. A few things are implied, but the author doesn’t go into the details of the things that happened. There’s some mild kissing, but nothing more happens between characters on the pages.
LDS Connections
This book was written for an LDS audience. There are references to the church, bishops, missionaries, and other things that an LDS audience will be familiar with but that those who are not members of the LDS church may not be as familiar with.
This was an enjoyable book, but I feel like something was missing. I’m not even entirely sure how to explain that. Maybe, I just never really felt fully connected to the characters. Perhaps, it was the ending, which was more open-ended than I prefer. If you don’t mind a long book, this was worth reading. I would recommend it to others who enjoy World War II books. It just wasn’t as good as some of the other books that I’ve read by Dean Hughes.
