Phil Oakley

Longhorn Phil Oakley

The youngest Oakley brother, Ray, avoids the Army only to find himself in a face off with German U-boats in the Gulf Mexico in the year following America's entry into World War II. His older brother, Brooks, who had reluctantly agreed to accept a commission as a lieutenant, is assigned to a difficult aging general in Washington who sends him to chase through the backwoods of Mississippi; then he orders Brooks to a special school in blizzard bound Michigan where he is trained to manage winter campaigns against the Nazis in northern Europe. In this third and final volume of the series The Oakleys, the two brothers face continuous and seemingly insurmountable challenges throughout the balance of the war and emerge into the postwar Texas boomtowns of Austin and Houston. There's lots of action in this work of historical fiction. And just as in the first two books in the series, the characters in Longhorn are based on real members of my family and the narrative is derived almost completely from stories these relatives told me themselves. Longhorn is a depiction of American families, then and now.