By the time author Brett Davis gets the hero of his latest book beside Wernher von Braun at that famous 1969 Moon landing celebration in Huntsville, Ala., we wonder if Johnny Nicholas will really try to kill the rocket man.

The Moon Above is fiction, but it is historical fiction and, if anyone had a reason to hate von Braun at the time of his greatest triumph, its a Black World War II veteran, former Tuskegee Airman and former German P.O.W..

Nicholas has vowed revenge, for one thing, and his experience in the caves where slave labor built V-2 rockets for Hitler is plenty of fuel. Johnny Nicholas is a veteran of too much.

Author Davis, a former Alabama journalist, has written sci-fi and fantasy novels for years from his home in Washington, D.C. But hes had Nicholass story in mind since the 1980s when he reported on the trial of German rocket scientist Arthur Rudolph for The Huntsville Times.

Rudolph led V-2 development for Germany during the war, then came to America with von Brauns Paperclip team and led Saturn V development for America in Huntsville.

The trial was about whether Rudolph could re-enter America after a trip to Canada, and Rudolph lost. He had to leave the United States and return to Germany. As he reported on the trial, Davis came across a reference to the real Johnny Nicholas.

Legend had it that Nicholas was in the Dora camp where the V-2s were made. And he was rumored to be a Tuskegee Airman, one of the elite Black pilots who broke the color barrier in the sky.

What if he really was a Tuskegee Airman? Davis says he wondered. How did he get there? What happened to him afterward?

The Moon Above is the result. Its a coming-of-age story about a talented Black boy whose family flees Jim Crow Alabama for Chicago and some social justice, then returns South to a new world of change and danger.

The reader is immersed in Chicagos vibrant Black newspaper world, where Nicholas father worked; in Tuskegee, where only the best could represent Black people in flight; and in the post-war conflict among Blacks themselves over how to win true freedom in America.

Would they stay with the emerging Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his non-violent revolution or turn to Malcom X and his young followers ready to fight? At every step of the story, smart and passionate black women are making their own choices and teaching their own lessons.

Reading the book, it is tempting to think this much history couldnt have happened to one man. But Black men did everything depicted here and more. And when they came home from the war, some led a movement for civil rights and some joined Germans for the American Moon shot.

The reality of those years needs little embellishment. It just needs a good reporter and storyteller, and Davis is both.

The author, who is white, said that he learned his book would be published at the same time the white author of American Dirt was drawing protests for writing about Hispanic life on the U.S.-Mexico border. Davis said it certainly occurred to me that he might be criticized for writing a Black mans journey.

The differences are I didnt get paid a load of money that could have gone to other people, he said. I did a lot of research, both on the war time and the civil rights stuff and the history of what was going on.

He read The Defender, the black Chicago newspaper that employed the fictional Nicholas father, and he traveled to walk where his character would have walked and learned to fly.

The rest was just how would I react if that was my background and then all these things happened to me, Davis said. If you only write about what you know, then we have no fiction. Its only biography or autobiography.

I would welcome people to tell me what they think, Davis said. Whether good or bad. I learned some things in the writing of it, so hopefully people will learn some things about history when they read it and the human condition.

We know von Braun survived that night on Huntsvilles Courthouse Square, and the story of the Black Americans in The Moon Above is as compelling as the rocket mans.

The Moon Above is available in print from Amazon and will be out digitally in September. The author has family still living in Alabama and visits regularly. His next book will also be set in the state. Southern writers are always interested in writing about the South, Davis said. Its just taken me a little while to get around to it.

(Davis and the author of this review worked together at The Huntsville Times)

Link:

A Black Alabama hero fights for America and freedom in new novel - AL.com