The Jersey Brothers
Published in 2017, The Jersey Brothers is Sally Mott Freeman's deeply reported account of her father and his two brothers, Bill, Benny, and Barton Mott, three Naval Academy raised sons of a New Jersey family who served in the Pacific during World War II. Bill worked in the White House Map Room with President Franklin Roosevelt, Benny survived the Battle of Midway aboard the carrier Enterprise, and Barton, the youngest, was captured in the Philippines and disappeared into the Japanese prisoner of war system. The book follows the older brothers' increasingly desperate search for Barton through the chaos of the Pacific campaign, drawing on family letters, military archives, and survivor interviews. Freeman, a former corporate communications executive turned writer, weaves grand strategy with intimate family detail, producing a book that is at once a popular history of the Pacific war and a daughter's tribute to her father and his brothers.
What you might want to know about The Jersey Brothers
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Sally Mott Freeman's family history of three brothers from New Jersey who served in the Pacific in World War II.
Yes, it is reported nonfiction drawing on family letters, military records, and interviews, though it reads with novelistic detail.
Barton's captivity in the Philippines is a major thread, including the brutal conditions in Japanese camps.
The Jersey Brothers was written by Sally Mott Freeman, published in 2017 by Simon & Schuster.
The Jersey Brothers is 588 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Jersey Brothers takes most readers 9 to 13 hours to finish.
The Jersey Brothers is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.