“Make sure your decency, your humanity, is the last thing you give up.”
Summary - Set during World War II, that explores themes of race, war, and morality through the interconnected stories of three characters from Jim Crow Alabama: a white Marine, a Black woman working in a shipyard, and a Black man who joins the segregated 761st Tank Battalion. The novel follows their individual struggles with prejudice on the home front and the battlefield, examining how the war forces them to confront their beliefs about race and what it means to be an American.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Leonard Pitts Jr is a force. His ability to create characters that come to life, to weave together storylines seamlessly, to teach you history without feeling like you’re being taught is other level.
This was a reread for me and it held up extremely well, knowing where the storylines were headed gave me a new focus when reading a second time. A group of us are reading through Pitts backlist and this was the fourth book we’ve read, with only one left. The last one (came out in 2024), 54 Miles, is a sequel to this one, and one that I haven’t read yet.
If you love learned about history in a way that doesn’t feel like learning, I highly recommend checking out his books!
Find The Last Thing You Surrender at the publisher →
Toni Rocchetti is a copy editor helping authors strengthen their narratives, deepen character arcs, and find the story that is already in the draft. She reads 80+ books a year across literary fiction, memoir, and nonfiction — and writes about what she is learning along the way. Work with Toni →
