EXIT A

The title refers to the transit stop for an American military base in Japan and symbolizes the mixing of the two cultures as well as the tensions between them. Severin, a high school football player on the base, falls for the commander/coach's half-Japanese daughter, but the fledgling relationship goes awry when she gets involved in a local crime and goes to prison. Years later they meet again. John Slattery ably handles the Asian names and English as spoken by Japanese and, later, Vietnamese characters, as well as the speech cadences of a disturbed college student, kidnap victims, and a dying man used to being in command, among others. The novel's ending may be unrealistic, but you can't fault the performance. J.B.G. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/ SEP 07]