The Rising Tide by Jeff Shaara is the account of the war in North Africa and Sicily. The novel is told through the multiple perspectives of people who were there, including a tank gunner, a paratrooper, Eisenhower, Patton, and Rommel. Balancing these perspectives is a fair amount of narrative about the events happening surrounding these individuals, so the reader always has a good understanding of the larger picture.
This is one of the reasons why I like historical fiction: you learn something about history while you as a reader, experience it through the characters' eyes. The shock, then fear of the tank gunner who scores a direct hit on the turret of a massive German Tiger tank, that just keeps coming, and his subsequent race to escape. Afterwards, Shaara provides the reader with a narrative about the fullscope of the disaster at Kasserine Pass. This balance is what makes the story so engaging. Listening to the audiobook, my son would always say, "yes!" whenever we switched into the paratrooper or tank gunner's perspective, and lamented when we switched to Eisenhower's perspective or long bit of narrative, while I found all parts equally intriguing.
However, I found that this novel and Shaara's sequel, The Steel Wave, and even Pressfield's novel, Killing Rommel, only have Rommell's fictional view representing the German perspective of the battles and German command structure. In all three, Rommel constantly rails against the German high command, making them look inept. That may be true, but we don't read about anyone else's perspective to counterbalance or support his view. My son said he was voting for Rommel, because everyone was against him.
The Rising Tide and its reading by Paul Michael is a very engaging novel of the battle for North Africa and Sicily that I highly recommend.
