The Goats of Santo Domingo by Robert McEvilla

Cover_The Goats of Santo Domingo
The Goats of Santo Domingo by Robert McEvilla
Publisher: Wild Child Publishing
Genre: Historical, Mainstream
Length: Full (222 pgs)
Heat: Sweet
Rated: 3 stars
Review by Rose

Whenever John Romero was asked if he was wounded in Vietnam, he always got a confused look when he replied that his eye was lost in Santo Domingo.

A former baseball player with just six weeks left to serve in the army, John’s plans for making a comeback are interrupted when his unit is deployed to the Dominican Republic, and he finds himself in a combat situation. While dodging bullets, he meets a beautiful Dominican woman, the aloof, Ramona. She inflames the private passions of the paratroopers that view her from their command post. Romero plots a course to win her affections, but the political intrigue and the carnage in the streets of Santo Domingo conspire to thwart his every move, forcing him to make a drastic decision.

John Romero’s plans to return to the United States and once again take up his career as a professional baseball player are thwarted when his unit is deployed to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to aid in the military action. While he’s there, he’s intrigued by Ramona– a Dominican woman who sits in front of her house daily and reads.

Capacity: Store at room temperature somewhere around 59 and 86 degrees F (15-30 degrees C) far from dampness, viagra buy uk hotness. Depression The most common effect of childhood abuse secretworldchronicle.com order cheap cialis found in victims is clinical depression. There thought about this sildenafil 50mg tablets are other problem associated such as impotence or erectile dysfunction(ED), low sexual libido etc. As I noted, today’s diagnostic framework order cialis online is outdated in its limitation to symptom based diagnosis. The book is told from two points of view–and the voices are well-writen enough that the transitions are clear. I have to give the author credit there. When the segment is in John’s POV it sounds very different than when the story is being told from Ramona’s POV.

I can’t call this a romance, however, even though that’s the category the publisher puts it in. Yes, the characters have an interest in each other–they may even love each other. But, for the majority of the book they are apart. There are two brief scenes with them together and, even then, they don’t interact much. The ending is a bit atypical of your regular romance as well.

The writing is good and the story kept me interested. If you are like military novels, this may be the book for you because the detail about the military action and the men John serve with are really well-done. I could see this as a movie–and would enjoy it as a war movie. The scenes played out clearly and were well described.

There’s a bit of a mystery involved as well as one of the men John serves with is killed just before he’s to be sent home and there’s some fear on John’s part that he might be implicated.

Rather than romance, this book is more a “slice of life” look at one man and one woman caught in a moment of time affected by war–and the devastation it can wreak on people’s lives. Go into it expecting that, and you won’t be in the least disappointed.

Comments

  1. Thank you for hosting

  2. Good morning,
    and thank you for beeing my today’s host. This is the second day of my tour, and I now realize the effort that goes into being a host. I appreciate your time spent.

  3. Hello everybody,
    I ‘m up and at ’em. I was grateful for the nice reviews I received from Librarian Judith yesterday, and from Long and Short Reviews today. Reviewers’re right, The Goats of Santo Domingo is not a romance novel, but for some reason it’s being marketed as one. Does anybody think it could be cosidered a romance?

  4. Thanks for sharing your book and the giveaway. Sounds like a good book. evamillien at gmail dot com

  5. How did you do the research for this? Was it based on personal experience or have you been to Santo Domingo? Where was the idea for this from (since it’s a bit outside the norm for that time period)?

    mnark111 AT gmail DOT com

    • Hello…M. Nark…thanks for your reply.
      Most of the novel is based on my experience while serving with the 82nd Airborne Division when we were deployed to the Dominican Republic in 1965 to intervene in a civil war there. Some of the facts about this footnote in history I gathered from newspaper accounts during this period.

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