Fallen Angels
By Walter Dean Myers
Would you risk your life for your country?
Richie Perry is 17 years old, fresh out of high school, and has no way to afford college or to make a living. He feels that the streets are too rough to live on, so he enrolls himself in the United States Army. He is shipped off to Vietnam to fight in the war, which is said to be almost over, but it is far from the end. He meets comrades along the way, Peewee, Lobel, Johnson, and Brunner. They do not expect to even fire their rifles, but when they realize what they had gotten into, their only goal is to make it out alive.
"The neat pile of body bags was waiting for the rest of us. There were enough there - the supply clerk had reached for the top one without even looking - to know that they expected that many of us would be going home in them"
(Myers pg. 43).
War is a dark and dangerous place.
The Fact Behind the fiction
Fallen Angels is dedicated to Walter Dean Myers's brother, Thomas Wayne "Sonny" Myers, who died in the Vietnam War on May 7, 1968. He is also the author of Slam!, Sunrise over Fallujah, The Beast, and many more riveting novels.
Praises
"War-story fans will find enough action here, though it isn't glorified. . . . Readers will be haunted." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A riveting account of the Vietnam War." -School Library Journal (starred review)
"This gut-twisting Vietnam War novel . . . breaks uncharted ground." -Booklist (starred review)
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Accolades
Coretta Scott King Award for Fiction, 1988
ALA Best Books for Young Adults,1988