Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island

The pivotal true story of the first fifty-three days of the standoff between
Imperial Japanese and a handful of Marine aviators defending the Americans dug
in at Guadalcanal, from the New York Times bestselling author of
Indestructible and Race of Aces.

On August 20, 1942, twelve Marine dive-bombers and nineteen Marine fighters
landed at Guadalcanal. Their mission: defeat the Japanese navy and prevent it
from sending more men and supplies to "Starvation Island," as Guadalcanal was
nicknamed. The Japanese were turning the remote, jungle-covered mountain in
the south Solomon Islands into an air base from which they could attack the
supply lines between the U.S. and Australia. The night after the Marines
landed and captured the partially completed airfield, the Imperial Navy
launched a surprise night attack on the Allied fleet offshore, resulting in
the worst defeat the U.S. Navy suffered in the 20th century, which prompted
the abandonment of the Marines on Guadalcanal.

The Marines dug in, and waited for help, as those thirty-one pilots and twelve
gunners flew against the Japanese, shooting down eighty-three planes in less
than two months, while the dive bombers, carried out over thirty attacks on
the Japanese fleet. Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island follows Major John
L. Smith, a magnetic leader who became America's top fighter ace for the time;
Captain Marion Carl, the Marine Corps' first ace, and one of the few survivors
of his squadron at the Battle of Midway. He would be shot down and forced to
make his way back to base through twenty-five miles of Japanese-held jungle.
And Major Richard Mangrum, the lawyer-turned-dive-bomber commander whose
inexperienced men wrought havoc on the Japanese Navy.

New York Times bestselling author John R. Bruning depicts the desperate effort
to stop the Japanese long enough for America to muster reinforcements and turn
the tide at Guadalcanal. Not just the story of an incredible stand on a
distant jungle island, Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island also explores the
consequences of victory to the men who secured it at a time when America had
been at war for less than a year and its public had yet to fully understand
what that meant. The home front they returned to after their jungle ordeal was
a surreal montage of football games, nightclubs, fine dining with America's
elites, and inside looks at dysfunctional defense industries more interested
in fleecing the government than properly equipping the military. Bruning tells
the story of how one battle reshaped the Marine Corps and propelled its
veterans into the highest positions of power just in time to lead the service
into a new war in Southeast Asia.