Through the Wheat

A Novel of the World War I Marines

By: Thomas Boyd

Narrated by: Gene Engene

Fresh out of a Defiance, Ohio, high school, Thomas Boyd joined the Marines to serve his country in the patriotic heat of the spring of 1917. In 1919 he came home from the war with a Croix de Guerre and a desire to write. He joined the St. Paul News as a journalist and opened a bookstore, whose patrons included F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis.

Through the Wheat appeared to immediate acclaim, with F. Scott Fitzgerald calling it "a work of art" and "arresting". Boyd wrote five other works before he died in Vermont of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 37.

©2008 Books In Motion (P)2008 Books In Motion

Critic reviews

"A remarkable first novel." ( The Nation)

Hard to follow

What would have made Through the Wheat better?

The reading of the book could not keep my interest. The reader's voice was too detracting from the story, and his character voices just didn't seem to match the characters.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

I was disappointed in the book because the battles that I believed should have been described more in depth were not. I felt that there could have been more opportunity to weave a better plot into the entire book.

A novel...

Not to be confused with the much better “Through the Wheat” by Edward Simmons. The narrator was a bit over the top and meant well, but took away from the book. I seriously debated hearing the rest. I can’t recommend this book as an audiobook.

Amateurish

The narrarator is not gifted with the right voice and his character voices are caricatures at best. The author tries too hard to be poetic and his descriptive is painful to wade through. "The glass-imprisoned wine" I bet sounded witty and original in his head. Here it's a needless departure from the scene. Engene is just as out of place narrarating this text in his creaky, slightly quavering muffled voice. A poor choice to deliver mediocre fiction. But where Boyd really went awry is in his first paragraph where he drops the phrase "evil-odored blacks." When an author's ugly prejudice is laid out so unabashedly, he will automatically lose any reader who finds it distasteful. And I would bet that's most of the readership out there. A terrible waste of a credit