Readers of Mark Helprin’s many novels and short stories know that war is a universal theme in his writing because he believes that it is a permanent part of the human condition. Even in his novels without military combat, the protagonists must violently defeat various forms of evil to protect loved ones and home.
In Helprin’s latest novel, The Oceans and the Stars, war erupts between America and Iran and that nation’s terrorist proxies. The novel lightly touches on grand themes of statecraft but mostly concerns itself with the war journey of its protagonist, Stephen Rensselaer, the captain of a specially designed and upgraded patrol-coastal (PC) ship. More than this, the novel is Helprin’s love letter to the old Navy and all the old virtues that it relied upon to protect our great country and give us peace and the opportunity for a good life.
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