Category: History (Page 3 of 6)

This should not shock anyone who reads my posts regularly…I read and am recommending another WWII novel:

The Words I Never Wrote: A Novel by Jane Thynne

This book was featured on my early 2020 reading list.

In our standard dual timeline, it’s 2016 and Juno is looking for a typewriter as a prop for a photo shoot. She finds a Hermes 3000 that the seller says belonged to Cordelia Capel, a famous journalist. The timewriter case contains half of an unpublished novel.

Juno reads the novel which details Cordelia and her sister Irene’s lives before and during WWII, then the novel abruptly ends.

Cordelia works as a journalist in Paris and later for the British intelligence. Irene has married a German (in 1936) and is living in pre-war Berlin married to a highly respected man among the Nazi-party.

I’m excited to tell you about yet another new work of WWII historical fiction, The Lieutenant’s Nurse by Sara Ackerman.

Previously I have recommended lots of this genre set in Germany, Poland, England, and France, but this is the first book I’ve read since From Here to Eternity that is set in Hawaii, right before and during the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

On November 28, 1941, Eva Cassidy travels to Hawaii aboard the SS Lurline to start a post as an Army Core nurse and meet her likely fiancé who is stationed there. But when she meets the dashing Lt. Clark Spencer on the ship and learns that the United States may be closer to war than she feared, her future becomes more complicated.

I’ve read so much WWII historical fiction, but I’m always looking for something new in this genre that gives me an additional perspective. This new book by Kristin Harmel, an author I’ve previously enjoyed, is set in the Champagne region of France during German occupation:

The Winemaker’s Wife

Mixing past and present, love and betrayal, this is the story of two couples who run a winery and another that run a restaurant, each making different choices to survive while serving the Germans.