Run with the Wind - Jim Cole

Run with the Wind is the second book in Texas author Jim Cole’s planned trilogy, a series that began in 2016 with Never Cry Again and will be concluded in 2023 with the publication of Brothers.  Never Cry Again is a coming-of-age novel set in Depression era Texas and Arkansas; Run with the Wind, takes place in World War II Galveston; and Brothers will be set in 1950s Dallas.

 

“There was no way Sarah Jacobs could have believed that within fifteen minutes there would be a dead man in her front yard.” (First sentence of Run with the Wind)

 

Sarah is already nervous because her ten-year-old son is late coming home from his fishing trip, so she is hoping to spot Benji from her front lawn when it all happens. First, she notices Benji, who is moving toward her at a much faster clip than any kid dependent on an aluminum wrist cane to get around could ever reasonably be expected to move. Then, she hears the roaring engine of the car that is barreling toward her and Benji from less than a block away. Almost before she can react, the car crashes through her fence, and there is indeed a dead man in her front yard.

 

Sarah is a young widow, and Benji, who has suffered the effects of polio since he was just over a year old, is her only child. Ever since her husband’s sudden death, Sarah has struggled to pay her son’s medical bills, but she and Benji are so determined to beat Benji’s crippling illness that the thought of losing to the disease never crosses their minds. Benji has promised his mother that one day he will “run with the wind,” and she believes him.

 

Now both their lives are about to change forever. And it all starts with the dead man in their front yard.

 

Jim Cole

America’s entry into World War II is on the horizon, and when that day comes, Sarah will become instrumental in helping to keep American oil tankers as safe as possible from the German submarines patrolling the Gulf of Mexico. Her job with the Galveston Pilots’ Guild is to schedule the pilots of all the ocean-going ships entering the Gulf via the Houston-Galveston ship channel. This becomes a particularly critical responsibility when Germany starts sinking ships off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana without warning because the channel is not wide enough for the large vessels to make an emergency U-turn. The only way to get back to safety is to leave the channel for a time-consuming change of direction before re-entering it.

 

But even during a world war, life goes on. The ever-determined Benji grows into the much physically stronger Ben, a new man comes into his and his mother’s lives, and Sarah proves to herself and her community how much a strong woman like her can do when given the chance.

 

Bottom Line: Run with the Wind is both historical fiction and another of Cole’s inspiring  coming-of-age stories. Readers of a certain age will recall what living through the annual polio scare  was like. Younger readers will not, but perhaps the current pandemic will give them a small sense of what it was like for parents to watch their children be so suddenly struck down by such a horrible crippling disease – and worrying about the possibility constantly. Watching Ben work so hard to beat polio is what makes Run with the Wind such a memorable novel for someone like me who still vividly remembers the day that everything he owned as a four-year-old was burned in a single barnyard fire after one of his playmates was diagnosed with polio.

 

 

Review Copy provided by Author for review purposes