O'Hara's Choice

by Leon Uris Narrated by Jack Garrett

Overview

Two decades after the Civil War, first-generation Irish-American Zachary O'Hara, son of a legendary Marine and a force of a man in his own right, finds himself playing a critical role as the very existence of the Marine Corps is being decided. If he can help persuade the Secretary of the Navy that the Marines will be crucial to America's security in years to come -- all the while hefting a heavy, secret weight in his heart -- he'll save the Corps and make his career.But there's an obstacle in his path that this warrior hadn't planned on. Amanda Blanton Kerr, the daughter of a ruthless industrialist, is on a mission of her own; passionate, obstinate, and whip-smart, she's an heiress poised to blaze a trail for all women.

O'Hara's Choice is the story of the inevitable collision of these two handsome, fighting spirits, in which getting their souls' desires could jeopardize everything they -- and their parents before them -- scraped and struggled to achieve.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

A posthumous novel by Uris, who died, at 78, on June 21, celebrates the Marine Corps, as did his first, Battle Cry, now marking its 50th anniversary. O'Hara's Choice centers on Marines who fought in the Civil War and clarifies how their spirit lives on: especially that of legendary Sergeant Paddy O'Hara, whose courage and élan reside in his son, Captain Zachary O'Hara. Do the men under the O'Haras' commands come as alive and demand our attention as deeply as do the "gyrenes" of Battle Cry? Well, passages of period description in Washington and research into the lives of Manhattan immigrants often stretch forth into a fine singing voice, for it's O'Haras we speak of here. Paddy is Corporal O'Hara as the battle of Bull Run starts and the Marine lines fold against Rebel artillery. Assisting Paddy, whose officers are all dead, is Wally Kunkle, 13, the Marine drummer boy. Time shifts throughout the story, back and forth from battle to decades later, with Paddy given the Congressional Medal of Honor, promoted to the honorary top enlisted rank of Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, and then retired and running a saloon in Lower Manhattan, while Wally Kunkle becomes Master Gunnery Sergeant. All this glory leads to son Zachary's problems with his da's greatness, even when Zach woos Amanda Kerr, a wealthy heiress who wants to build a women's college. Uris's title is ambiguous: it refers to Zach's own long tenure in the Marines serving as a veil to cover up his father's deepest secret, and also to his need to resign from the Corps if he's to marry Amanda, escort her around the world, and help build her college. Bloody battles well done, much excellent period writing (aside from love-stuff), andaltogether a recovery from 2002's woozy A God in Ruins.

From the Publisher

Bloody battles well done, much excellent period writing ...” — Kirkus Reviews

“A spellbinding storyteller.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“[Uris pulls] all his characters together like a master puppeteer.” — Chicago Tribune

“A master at weaving historical fact and fiction.” — USA Today

“Uris is to the twentieth century what Charles Dickens was to the nineteenth.” — Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers

“A brilliant storyteller.” — Irish Voice

Irish Voice

A brilliant storyteller.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A spellbinding storyteller.

USA Today

A master at weaving historical fact and fiction.

Lisa Ko

Uris is to the twentieth century what Charles Dickens was to the nineteenth.

Chicago Tribune

[Uris pulls] all his characters together like a master puppeteer.

Chicago Tribune

[Uris pulls] all his characters together like a master puppeteer.

USA Today

A master at weaving historical fact and fiction.

Associated Press Staff

Uris is to the twentieth century what Charles Dickens was to the nineteenth.

Associated Press

Uris is to the twentieth century what Charles Dickens was to the nineteenth.

FEB/MAR 04 - AudioFile

Published posthumously, O’HARA’S CHOICE is the final novel by bestselling author Leon Uris. Essentially a post-Civil War epic and love story, the story is rambling, yet somewhat entertaining. In particular, the dynamics between Amanda Kerr, her industrialist father, and Marine Zachary O’Hara are superb, but other parts of the story are less fulfilling. Jack Garrett is a generally good reader, but his performance here is not up to par. Garrett’s pace is excruciatingly slow, his pauses between sentences and chapters way too long. The lackluster delivery, coupled with the book’s illogical twists, such as Amanda’s inexplicable transformation into a cunning businesswoman and her related decision to abandon Zachary, results in a book that does not measure up to Uris’s other works. D.J.S. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173810700
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	10/04/2005
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

O'Hara's Choice LP

Chapter One

Paddy's Wart-Hogs

1888 -- Prichard's Inn

The Royal Society of Paddy O'Hara's Wart-Hogs were the ugliest and most vile men to ever wear the uniform of United States Marines. They were molded out of old, stiff, cracked leather.

The Wart-Hogs were an exclusive brotherhood with no pro-vision at inception for perpetuation. There were about eighteen charter members, no one knew the exact number, all men whose lives had been saved in battle through the gallantry of Paddy O'Hara in three, maybe four, separate Civil War actions.

For many years after the War, all who could gathered for an annual donnybrook. As time moved on, many of the reunions took place at graveside and the society grew more exclusive. But no Wart-Hog ever died in the poorhouse. They were bound by the most powerful of all ties, that of men and their comrades in a war.

The Wart-Hog doors were always open to other Wart-Hogs, but they were scattered and burdened with family life and other traumas, so that meetings became occasional and by chance. Only three remained in the Corps. However, it appeared that the rendezvous at Prichard's was by design. Prichard's Inn & Tavern stood on the Post Road in Virginia, across the Potomac from Washington, a most convenient watering hole.

Master Gunnery Sergeant Wally Kunkle was first to arrive by horseback from Quantico down the pike. The Corps had a piece of land there and had established a small, convenient station near the Capitol, where they formed up new units, or housed an overflow from Washington. Quantico had become a nice rest spot and transit center.

Master Gunnery Sergeant Kunkle had been on sea duty and a member of the contingent that ran the Germans out of Samoa. Kunkle had not been home in three years. Well, he actually didn't have a home.

The Gunny wore his forty-odd years well and he cut quite the figure as he rode up to the inn at Prichard's. When the stable boy had seen to the horse's comfort, he came to the Gunny's room and poured buckets of hot water over him in a big galvanized tub to wash away the road dust. Kunkle then repaired to the common room with the large fireplace in the pub and allowed himself to be overtaken by nostalgia.

1840s -- Philadelphia

Wally was the middle child of nine kids, son of a German immigrant who worked as a blacksmith in the Philadelphia police stable. The family lived on a cobblestone alley in a squeezed row cottage in South Philly. During one particularly dirty winter, Wally's mother and an infant sister died of the throat disease.

The children, save Wally, were scattered to relatives, mostly on farms in western Pennsylvania. Wally was a quiet, ornery, angry, fierce kid, and when the authorities came for him, he hid. He was finally taken to a humorless Lutheran orphanage, where his failure to bend to discipline led to corporal punishment.

Wally had a fight a day, sometimes more. After a year of it, he ran away from the orphanage and begged his father to let him remain hidden in the cottage to which he had returned.

The tiny house no longer had the siren lure of baking bread, as it did when Ma was alive, but had deteriorated into a home for rats drawn by the smell and taste of beer.

Wally spent his time near the navy yard on the Delaware River, where street urchins hung out, and picked up penny work doing laundry and running errands for the sailors. It was a highly territorial environment, where one used his fists to stake a claim to work a particular barracks. Wally fought his way to the barrack housing a Marine platoon.

Some of the Marines had been heroes in the wars against Mexico and the Seminole Indians. There were shoes and brass buttons and buckles to be shined and fresh hay to be changed in the bedding and a potbellied stove to be fed and cleaned. And clean he did. The Marines had far fewer bedbugs than the sailors.

Corporal Paddy O'Hara, an Irish immigrant who had survived the terrible potato famine, became Wally's big brother and protector. Wally made it the best job in the navy yard. The Marines were generous with smokes, the currency of the day.

On payday, illegal boxing matches were held beyond the main gates. Marines, sailors, shipyard workers, and visiting crews all had their champions in bare-knuckle pugilism. Before the men went to the pit, kids held preliminary fights for pennies tossed into the ring, and an occasional nickel. For Wally Kunkle at thirteen, this was a bonanza. After a particularly bloody match, there was sometimes as much as a dollar to be divided, seventy–thirty.

As a fighter, Wally Kunkle was cursed with a special gift. He could absorb punches and never go down. His talent, born in the alleys of South Philly and honed at the orphanage, won a lot of beer money for the Marines who bet on him. Wally ran out of competition his own age and size and had to take on bigger kids. "Young Ironsides," the Marines called him, and "Boilerplate" and "Kid Granite Jaw." Even Paddy O'Hara was unable to get Wally to stop fighting heavier and heavier opponents.

Then the inevitable happened. Wally took on an opponent thirty pounds heavier than himself. He showed the courage of a little bull, but absorbed a fearsome beating.

Corporal O'Hara pleaded, in vain, for him to throw in the towel when a sudden change of fortune occurred. Wally's opponent became so exhausted throwing punches that he could no longer lift his arms or catch his breath. And that was that. After laying out the bullyboy, Wally collapsed.

Corporal O'Hara lifted Wally in his arms and carried him back to the barrack and declared his boxing career over ...

O'Hara's Choice LP. Copyright © by Leon Uris. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Videos