Review: Excellent and beautifully moving
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 3, 2014
Kaje Harper is an author I always enjoy so when the opportunity to grab 'Into Deep Waters' occurred, I jumped at it. The fact that this book was a part of the Love is Always Write event for the Goodreads M/M Romance group attracted my interest even more. The photo description and the letter to the author clinched my desire to read this story and I knew I was going to love it. And I did.Daniel has been on the Navy ship since three weeks before Pearl Harbor and that's been enough time for him to become a veteran. In fact, he was at Pearl Harbor and those memories will never go away. Jacob is a brand-new recruit who enlisted two days after Pearl Harbor happened, and his twin brother was killed on the Oklahoma, and it's a good thing he's been assigned as the pharmacist's mate in sickbay, because all the noise, confusion, yelling, and weapons training of boot camp has shattered his quiet world. Jacob is just glad the Navy looked at his background when they made his assignment. Daniel and Jacob become friends. Sharing their thoughts and fears, their homesickness and their dreams. And, somewhere along the way it becomes more."What now?” he asked. Maybe Daniel would know. Maybe Daniel would just take over and move past all his fears and hesitations and make him go where they both clearly wanted to.But Daniel's arms dropped to his sides. “Don't know. This is dangerous. Not that there aren't guys getting it on all over the ship in secret. I mean, there's not a girl in five hundred miles. Even the guys who aren't queer are willing to switch teams. Still it's risky.”Daniel knows he is queer, but Jacob can't be, no matter the truth of it. Jacob is expected to come home and take his place running the family pharmacy, marry, and have a son to continue the tradition. This is WWII, summer of 1942, and neither man has much in the way of experience, just desire and the feeling that this other person is vital to their life, to their sanity, to their world. But, oh the risk they take. They watch, silently, as two other seamen are caught and taken off ship in chains heading to prison. Jacob worries about where this is going to go and Daniel is more pragmatic about just getting through the war alive.Through their ship sinking, being stranded in the ocean with sharks all around, to Jacob being sent home injured and them being separated for two and a half years with only letters to sustain them, through getting to know each other again, and having to hide their love for each other, with fear of people finding out - through all of that, Jacob and Daniel loved each other in a way that shone off the pages. Before PTSD was spoken of, Jacob and Daniel had to learn to navigate the nightmares, the insomnia, the emotions that Daniel came home with. And it was Jacob who encouraged Daniel to draw again, something he did all the time when they first met, but somehow the horrors of war had taken that from him.Sixty-nine years of being a committed couple, just like "normal" couples, Jacob and Daniel have seen it all - Stonewall riots, AIDS, growing old together, making a home and a life. Together. Always together. And when New York passes the right to marry, Daniel surprises Jacob and they finally get the right to call each other husband. Oh, Kaje, you made me cry with this beautiful story. I loved it and these men are being added to my list of favorites and this book is too.