“Call me Johnny. Oh Johnny Oh. That’s what my mom calls
me. You can call me anything. But mainly call me a
ballplayer. A center fielder. I’m good, and I’m going to be
even better.”[pgs. 36,37]
A talented athlete,
Johnny Wrigley firmly believes that someday he will play
major league baseball. But on the way to his dreams, Johnny
finds his life unexpectedly taking a detour. In April 1944,
Johnny is a newly minted marine on a troop train heading
west for California, where he will be shipped overseas to
fight in the Pacific Theater.
At a brief stop in
Wichita, Johnny gets off the train and falls in love. She’s
giving apples and cigarettes to the marines, and she is the
most beautiful girl Johnny has ever seen. In a storeroom at
the station, they share an intimacy that Johnny will
treasure for the next two years at war—and beyond.
As a flamethrower operator on the suicide squad in
Peleliu, Johnny sees the worst of battle. Scores of his
fellow soldiers are killed around him, but memories of Betsy
Luck (the private name Johnny has given his Kansas love)
keep him safe. Yet nothing prepares Johnny for the combat in
Okinawa—and the terrible events that will haunt him forever.
Two years later, Johnny is back in Wichita,
searching for the girl he wants to marry. But fate has
different plans for Johnny, his long-dreamed-of baseball
career, and the girl whose memory helped him
survive.
Full of rich and vivid descriptions of
Johnny’s experiences both as a marine and as a ballplayer,
Oh, Johnnyis a compelling, emotionally
complex story of one man’s remarkable coming-of-age—and Jim
Lehrer at his best.
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