Whistle First Edition

From the Estate of Barbara Walters.Whistle (1978), a novel by James Jones, tells the story of four wounded South Pacific veterans brought back by hospital ship to the United States during World War II. Much of the story takes place in a veterans hospital in the fictional city of Luxor, Tennessee (based on the city of Memphis). Whistle forms the third part of a war trilogy, after From Here to Eternity (1951) and The Thin Red Line (1962). Jones presented the characters of Mart Winch, Bobby Prell, Marion Landers, and Johnny Strange as Welsh, Witt, Fife, and Storm in The Thin Red Line. James Jones died in 1977 before finishing the novel. The final three chapters were completed by Willie Morris based on taped conversations with the author and extensive notes he had already written.[2] Jones expected that his novel would say, "Just about everything I have ever had to say, or will ever have to say, on the human condition of war."[3] Critical reception In a 1978 book review in Kirkus Reviews, an anonymous reviewer called the novel "a truly gratifying recovery of Jones' reputation after a long slump since the holding action of The Thin Red Line."