Wow, what a book! I dove into The Widows of Champagne thinking it might be just another sad World War II tale, but boy, was I in for a treat. This novel took me on a journey with three generations of resilient women fighting to safeguard their family’s vineyard during a tumultuous time in France. Gabrielle Leblanc Dupree, a woman with a secret mission, is at the forefront. Instead of gearing up for a grand celebration of two centuries of champagne excellence, she orchestrates a covert operation to protect the vineyard’s most precious vintages from the clutches of the Nazis. The tension is palpable, and you can feel the weight […]
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The Lost English Girl
Author Julia Kelly takes us on a journey to Liverpool in 1935, where we meet 18-year-old Viv Byrne, who was raised in a strict Catholic home. She finds herself in a difficult situation when she becomes pregnant after a one-night stand with a Jewish saxophonist Joshua Levinson. To avoid the shame of being an unwed mother, Viv and Joshua hastily tie the knot. But Viv’s overbearing mother offers Joshua a large amount of money to disappear on their wedding day, knowing the child will now be born in wedlock. He agrees and heads off to New York City to chase his dreams of jazz stardom. Five years later, Viv has […]
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Radar Girls
“Seems like war has always been around, mostly because men are unable to come to agreement in other ways.”—Sara Ackerman, Radar Girls. Daisy Wilder is a 23-year-old ranch hand who supports her sick mother and loves horses and Hawaii’s natural beauty. However, when the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor shakes their world, she not only loses her beloved horse but also her job. Following the Pearl Harbor attack, Daisy joins Women’s Air Raid Defense. There, she learns to guide pilots in dark skies and track suspicious planes over the Pacific. Yet not everyone believes in the abilities of these women, despite the nation’s future hanging in the balance. With unwavering […]
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Beasts of a Little Land
“Life is only bearable because time makes you forget everything. But life is worthwhile because love makes you remember everything.”― Juhea Kim, Beasts of a Little Land. Juhea Kim’s first novel tells a story of friendship and forgiveness during Korea’s fight for independence. The novel begins in 1917, when a captive a Korean hunter saves a young Japanese officer from an attacking tiger. In an instant, their destinies are connected, laying the foundation for an intricate saga spanning five decades. Central to the narrative is Jade Ahn, a young girl from a poor rural family who is sold to Miss Silver’s courtesan school in Pyongyang. She forms a deep friendship with an […]
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Tears of Amber
“The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.”—Aldous Huxley. Sofía Segovia, the bestselling author of The Murmur of Bees, has written another extraordinary historical novel, this time set in Eastern Europe during WWII. Tears of Amber is inspired by actual events—not only by official texts but also by the accounts of two children and their families who traveled enormous distances to survive one of the biggest exoduses in human history. The Nazi Party pushes eastward, reaching the […]
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The Ways We Hide
This wonderful novel maintained my interest from the first sentence. Unlike so many WWII novels I’ve read, The Ways We Hide one isn’t about the British who served as intelligence agents. it’s about an American woman’s involvement with MI9 (which I knew nothing about). MI9, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9, was a highly secret department of the War Office between 1939 and 1945. Their function was two-fold: to help Allied POWs escape Nazi Germany, and help downed airmen evade capture after being shot down. Fenna Vos grew up on Michigan’s harsh Upper Peninsula. On Christmas Eve, 1913, the union holds a party at the Italian Hall in […]
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