The writing was good, engaging, and full of compassion for our four-legged friends.. all good things. It just wasn't enough for me in the end. In the meantime Bettina Blazak a young reporter for the local Laguna Beach paper ”The Coastal Eddy” is doing research about Street Dogs –they are dogs that don’t have an owner and are dirty, and might be injured. When captured they are treated and placed in a shelter for adoption. For good and often for bad, Joseph Conrad’s late novels saw a resurgence in his romanticism. Conrad’s novels were always romantic, but the nature of that romanticism changed over time. In his early novels, the romance lay more in the description and the plotting than in the often sordid and seedy characters who dominated the stories. Rescue is an exiting book that should appeal to anyone who likes historical fiction about WWII that includes plenty of adventure and danger. I was not prepared for this book. I thought it was going to be a fun thriller that included a dog. I was mistaken.

Conrad left his native Poland in his middle teens to avoid conscription into the Russian Army. He joined the French Merchant Marine and briefly employed himself as a wartime gunrunner. He then began to work aboard British ships, learning English from his shipmates. He was made a Master Mariner, and served more than sixteen years before an event inspired him to try his hand at writing.The Rescue is the third book in a trilogy-in-reverse. It takes place before An Outcast of the Islands, which in turn took place before Almayer’s Folly, each work acting almost as a prequel to the last. However, the 20-year gestation has perhaps changed some of Conrad’s original concerns.

As in so much Conrad, and as in "Almayer's Folly" and "An Outcast of the Island," that precede "The Rescue," it is much more man and his relationship with the world, as opposed to each other, that draws his most attention. Suddenly, an impossible chance to save her father falls into Meg's lap. After following a trail of blood in the snow, Meggie finds an injured British spy hiding in her grandmother's barn. Captain Stewart tells her that a family of German refugees must be guided across Nazi-occupied France to neutral Spain, whereupon one of them has promised to free Meg's father. Captain Stewart was meant to take that family on their journey, but too injured to complete the task himself, he offers it to Meg, along with a final code from Papa to help complete the mission -- perhaps the most important, and most difficult, riddle she's received yet. Mrs Travers is fascinated by Immada's attractiveness, but the girl and her brother reproach Lingard for recently neglecting them, and leave with him when the interview comes to a fruitless conclusion. Very shortly after publication in 1920, a book review came out in "The Sewanee Review" in which G.H.C. said that The Rescue is "deeply and sincerely imaginative", and "is Conrad at his best" [1] Lingard has a fixation like Charles Gould in "Nostromo," although it is never explicitly spelled out just what his prize or objective is (at least not to me). Lingard does bring Mrs. Travers in on the secret - his 'Guffin,' if you will - and it attracts her even more, but to this reader anyway exactly what Lingard hopes to accomplish is never clear. That it all goes to hell, on the other hand, is. As always, Conrad paints incredible settings for his characters that, like Faulkner, go through layers and layers of thought and remembrance without, in real time, doing much or going far. The whole novel takes place in something less than a square mile, I'd say, and one of the best things about "The Rescue" is how Conrad can make a world in this postage stamp on the south seas.

Reader Reviews

It's February 1942 and Meg Kenyon, 12, is living on her Grandmère's farm with her French mother in Nazi occupied France. She hasn't seen her English-born dad since he left in May 1940 after receiving a telegram from London and Meg believes he has been imprisoned by the Nazis, if he is even still alive. Before he left, he created a jar full of coded messages for her to solve - deciphering each other's coded messages was something they both enjoyed doing. Now, however, there was only one message left and Meg has been putting off solving it. Conrad has also removed a good deal of the excessive verbiage that was in his first draft of The Rescue, making this a better book than the other two works in this loose trilogy. However, while the book is vastly improved as a result, it cannot be counted as one of Conrad’s best works. It is too wordy and abstract when it needs to be pacey and forceful. However, in his final phase, Conrad gave himself over to far more romantic tales, with characters who were far too idealised to exist in real life. While Conrad was not given to writing upbeat stories at the best of times, the later stories were almost doomed to an unhappy ending, because it was simply inconceivable that the romantic characters could do anything conceivably mundane, such as live like any normal married couple.

Meg Kenyon may be young, but she is already doing what she can to help the Resistance fighters hiding near her grandmere's farm. When her mother gets hurt and an injured British spy takes refuge in their barn on the same night, Meg is recruited for a dangerous mission. She will lead a family of three out of France to safety and gain her father's release from a prison camp in Germany. This book is nonstop action and filled with difficult decisions. As Nielsen points out in her Author's Notes, the fascination with WW II history is in part due to our wonderings about what we would have done had we been in their shoes. Would we have been able to glean clues from this note that Meg received from her father? As Dr. Felix Rodriguez shows Bettina around the clinic, they come to a dog she wants to hear more about (named “shot dog” by the vet). He says that a young boy brought him in, bleeding and suffering from grave injuries. He labored to save the animal, giving him a second chance. Almost without thinking, Bettina adopts the dog. Of course, she knows nothing about him or how he got hurt; she just can’t let him die after all that she has heard. The dog’s 30-day adoption period expires that very day. He can no longer be kept at the clinic, and he can't be released onto the streets. That leaves just one option. Speaking of characters I found myself yelling at Bettina but she just would not listen and falls for Dan’s con! You can see this same fault hobbling The Nigger of the Narcissus where Conrad departs from the matter-of-fact struggle of men vs sea; to ruminate pointlessly about catharsis. (Uncle Joe: show us! Don't tell us!)

Book Summary

If I were a better person, I might’ve felt guilty...My only regret was that we wouldn’t be here to see it” (167). T. Jefferson Parker is an Orange Count California hometown guy! He lived in Tustin, (where I live) moved from LA when he was 5 years old and attended local schools as well as college. Then moved to nearby Laguna Beach and worked in Irvine. He now lives in Fallbrook in North San Diego County. Many of his stories are based in SoCal.