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MWSA Review
Author Valarie J. Anderson follows up her 2022 book, Pearl Harbor’s Final Warning, with a prequel, Sparks in the Ether: A True Story about a Pioneer Radioman, her grandfather, George Street. The story is written as creative nonfiction using extensive family records and memories. Today, two can converse in voice, real time, with color images, across continents using only a small hand-held phone.
A hundred years ago Street jumped ship as a radioman after beginning just out of high school. He chose to help establish land, radio stations across the Pacific. This led to traveling and living in remote locations in China, Japan, and even then, in a remote location in Hawaii. Ocean-spanning radio communication was the art and science of only a few technicians using powerful transmitters and “speaking” in Morse Code. The establishment of land-based radio stations across the Pacific in the 1920s and 1930s was the task of a few pioneers among whom Street was often the lone agent in country for RCA. As an agent in China, Street once gathered and passed weather information to the Lindberghs on their China flight. Later, when struck with polio, Street bathed with President FDR at the clinic in Warm Springs, Georgia. When ending a failed first marriage, and two children left behind in the US, he met and eventually married a Russian refugee he met in China, who became his lifetime companion and caregiver. This is a true story of technical achievements, of personal tragedies, and of love affairs blended by the author but spoken in the voice of George Street. The book contains a bibliography and is indexed.
Review by Tom Beard (February 2025)
Author's Synopsis
Navigate the rough seas of the 20th century with George Street, one of a handful of men who spread across the globe, connecting communities to the worldwide wireless telegraphy network. He encountered the Lindberghs and FDR, witnessed an assassination attempt on the Emperor of Japan, scooped the Manchurian Incident, and became ravaged by polio. Faced with financial ruin, foreign doctors, and immobility, he married his Russian mistress. Then, his family betrayed him.
Sparks in the Ether is the prequel to the award-winning book Pearl Harbor's Final Warning; A Man, A Message, and Paradise Lost.
Format(s) for review: Paper and Kindle
Review Genre: Nonfiction—Creative Nonfiction
Number of Pages: 283
Word Count: 62,254