Beyond Peleliu

Beyond Peleliu
Peter Baird
Ravenhawk Books
ISBN: 1-893660-12-5
Fiction, Mainstream
Reviewed by Mona Lisa Safai

In his new novel, Beyond Peleliu, Peter Baird draws his audience into World War II where Tom McQuade, an aspiring young medical student and Virginia Russell (aka Madame Fortuno), a Christian Scientist who believes in healing powers. Together their opposite beliefs are what bring them together. Shortly after they marry and their son is born, Tom is called to what became the most vicious and unnecessary battles, the Battle of Peleliu. He served and was wounded badly. Because of his injury, his medical ambitions were scarred for the future. However, Tom returns home changed. He holds in his left clawed hand a secret unrevealed until decades later.
David becomes a San Francisco trial lawyer. Ambitious, driven. Just as his father. He carries many of the same traits. He uses alcohol, womanizing, pills, therapy, and working excessively to escape his life, his pain, just as his father had done. David had not been good husband twice, father, or man, in some respects. He had become a “modern day” version of Tom McQuade.
Before David was going to try a year long case, he grudgingly visited his father who was suffering from dementia. Tom wanted to talk to him before all his lucidity was gone. Tom finally tells the real McQuade family story that David did not know.
Baird writes a story about the McQuade family, their loss, disconnect, and discovery of truth after so many years. Once readers finishes the last page, they feel as though they know the characters personally.