Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey is historical fiction based on two real characters from World War I. The story alternates between the voices of Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, and the characters appear in time before the war, during the war, after the war, and, in the case of Cher Ami, a hundred years after the war.

One important setting is the battlefields of France after four years of horrific war. Major Charles “Whit” Whittlesey is leading a battalion of men from New York City and the Midwest to battle. And Cher Ami is a pigeon carrying messages from the battlefield to those who make decisions about the war.

The strength of the book, for me, was in the depiction of the gruesome details of the battlefield. It is almost incomprehensible how a person could go through that experience and resume a daily life of friends and family and work and play. Major Whittlesey could not, and Cher Ami was so wounded in battle that she did not have long to live with the sights she had seen during the war.

Another strength of the book was the character of Major Whittlesey. I completely believed every detail of this stoic and yet compassionate leader the author shared with us. He came across as a completely admirable leader and a man of the highest ideals, and he somehow managed to maintain these outwardly during his time on the battlefield.