Entertainment, Books - Navy Times

‘Turnaround’ aims at war’s legacies

“The Turnaround”

By George Pelecanos

Little, Brown, 294 pages

$24.99

There are moments in “The Turnaround” when George Pelecanos so perfectly evokes the 1970s that those of us who lived through that time may for brief moments forget we’re living in a different century.

Pelecanos’ setup ripples through three decades and rains down retribution and redemption on a group of middle-aged men living in the nation’s capital.

Six young men, three black, three white, meet on a dead-end street in one of Washington’s black neighborhoods. The innocent and the guilty will pay dearly for what happens on that terrible night 30 years ago.

Flash to the present, and Pelecanos just as assuredly places us in the middle of one of our country’s most controversial issues: the health and welfare of military veterans in treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

A chance meeting there sparks a partnership between two men, one black, one white, who have been living with the consequences of that fateful night.

They will work together to stop an ex-con who threatens their families’ peaceful existence. In the process, a secret will be exposed, murders will take place, and the human capacity for compassion will take hold.

Violence often has been at the core of Pelecanos’ novels. But in “The Turnaround,” his 15th, as in 2006’s “The Night Gardener,” scenes of bloody mayhem are at a minimum, although he still serves up several that can be described only as poetic.

It’s the violence of war and the heroism of our damaged veterans that is center stage. It’s not so much a political statement as a societal portrait of human suffering.

If the ending of this moving novel seems overly idealistic, it may reflect this thoughtful writer’s unflinching belief in the human capacity for love and forgiveness.