Adriana Kraft

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WWII

On Tour: The Shadow Network, by Deborah Swift @swiftstory @cathiedunn #WW2 #Thriller #HistoricalRomance #Review

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Betrayal, treachery, and courage against the odds

BOOK INFORMATION

Book Title: The Shadow Network
Series: Secret Agent Series (but can be read as a stand-alone)
Author: Deborah Swift
Publication Date: 13th February 2024
Publisher: HQ Digital
Page Length: 376
Genre: Historical Fiction / WW2

BLURB

One woman must sacrifice everything to uncover the truth in this enthralling historical novel, inspired by the true World War Two campaign Radio Aspidistra…

England, 1942: Having fled Germany after her father was captured by the Nazis, Lilli Bergen is desperate to do something pro-active for the Allies. So when she’s approached by the Political Warfare Executive, Lilli jumps at the chance. She’s recruited as a singer for a radio station broadcasting propaganda to German soldiers – a shadow network.

But Lilli’s world is flipped upside down when her ex-boyfriend, Bren Murphy, appears at her workplace; the very man she thinks betrayed her father to the Nazis. Lilli always thought Bren was a Nazi sympathiser – so what is he doing in England supposedly working against the Germans?

Lilli knows Bren is up to something, and must put aside a blossoming new relationship in order to discover the truth. Can Lilli expose him, before it’s too late?

Set in the fascinating world of wartime radio, don’t miss The Shadow Network, a heart-stopping novel of betrayal, treachery, and courage against the odds.

EXCERPT

England, 1940

The knock came again.

‘Mads?’ Lilli called.

Maddie came out of her room with the newspaper under her arm, slopping to the door in her slippers. ‘You could see who it is,’ she grumbled. ‘Probably someone collecting for the Sally Army.’

Lilli let the square, no-nonsense figure of Maddie push past her to unlock the chain and the Yale lock, just as the insistent knock came again.

‘All right, all right, I’m coming.’ Maddie yanked the door open and three men forced their way into the hall. One in a wet trilby hat followed by two policemen.

‘Lilliana Bergen?’ asked the man in the trilby.

‘No, I’m Madeleine Kettering,’ Maddie said. ‘That’s Lilli. What do you want?’

The three men surrounded Lilli before she even had time to blink.

‘What is it? What have I done?’ She tried to back away, a chill rippling down her spine. This was how they came for people, back in Germany.

‘I’m sorry, miss,’ the man in the trilby said, ‘but all enemy aliens have to come with us. Orders of the government.’

Enemy aliens? No, it must be a mistake. ‘You’ve got the wrong person. I’m a refugee. I came here to escape the Nazis. I’ve been in London more than two years.’

‘We have our orders,’ one of the policemen said. ‘You can take a suitcase with you though, one suitcase.’

The words hit her like a fist. One suitcase. That was what they said to Papa. And she’d no word of him since.

But this was England, not Germany. ‘It’s a mistake, I tell you. I have all the correct paperwork. Ask anyone. I’ve a job here, friends here. I’m about to go to work. You can’t possibly believe I—’

‘We’ll give you five minutes to pack,’ the second, burlier policeman said.

‘Let me speak to someone,’ Maddie said. ‘She’s done nothing. She’s about to train as a warden with the WRVS. The letter came today. Wait there, I’ll get it.’

‘No!’ Lilli tried to protest but Maddie had gone to get the letter from the mantelpiece. The men looked a little more uncertain.

‘Here!’ Maddie said, thrusting it into their hands.

One of the men looked at the envelope. ‘Lily Berg? According to our records, you’re Lilliana Bergen. Who is this Lily Berg? And it says you’re Welsh.’ He turned to Maddie. ‘She’s not Welsh, is she?’

‘They got it wrong. It must be a mistake . . .’ Lilli tailed off. She was caught, and couldn’t answer.

‘I can vouch for her good character,’ Maddie said, ‘and so can her employer, Reg Benson; she works as a singer and as a domestic for Mrs—’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said the man in the trilby. ‘All that will be looked into later.’

‘It’s an offence for a refugee to use a false name,’ the big policeman said. ‘She’s to come with us. Fetch your things, miss, or we’ll take you without them.’

Lilli looked at Maddie desperately, unable to believe what she was hearing.

‘Five minutes.’ The trilby man tapped his watch in a manner designed to intimidate.

She ran up the stairs again, her heart thudding. What to pack? Practical clothes. She was still wearing the silk dress, so she grabbed a cardigan and knitted jersey, plus a blouse and a skirt from the rail in the wardrobe, and another pair of flat shoes, the ones she used as a cleaner.

She was stopped in her tracks by the photo of her father, staring out at her from its silver frame.

Oh, Papa, she thought. Where will they take me?

She swept it up and pressed it to her heart, then thrust it into the inside pocket of her suitcase. From the dressing table she retrieved the gold Star of David on a chain that her mother had given her as a child. She never wore it, as it drew too much attention, but she couldn’t leave it behind.

‘Ready?’ A man’s voice from downstairs.

She grabbed her sheet music from the bedside table and at the last minute remembered her nightdress and squashed it in on top.

When she came down Maddie was complaining about how it was ridiculous, and she’d lose money from not having Lilli’s wages coming in.

‘Then get another lodger,’ the man in the trilby said. ‘One that isn’t a German.’

‘She’s a refugee,’ Maddie protested. ‘She came to get away from Hitler.’

‘Same difference.’ The burly policeman shrugged.

A police van idled at the kerb in a wreath of exhaust smoke. The officers yanked open the back doors and pushed Lilli to get in. Inside shivered another woman, an older lady, whose white face and carpet bag stuffed to overflowing, told Lilli she’d been caught equally unprepared.

‘Where are they taking us?’ Lilli asked.

The woman shook her head violently, her mouth sealed shut.

Lilli turned to see Maddie yelling, ‘I’ll report you! It’s disgusting! You can’t do this!’ and thumping on the side of the van. A noise that felt like small explosions. Then Maddie’s desperate voice; ‘Lilli! Write, hear me? You’d better write!’

MY REVIEW

Eight decades after the World War Two era, we continue to discover more and more about the colossal efforts of the Allied spy network and subversive efforts that collectively, ultimately, brought Hitler down.

In The Shadow Network, Author Deborah Swift has plunged us into a richly detailed and thrilling encounter with one of these operations: The clandestine broadcasts masquerading as Echt Deutsch (True German) that delivered false and disheartening information to the Reich troops, beginning in 1942.

I especially appreciated the author’s choice of a part-Jewish German refugee as her heroine. Lilli’s personal story kept me as a reader immersed in the horror of the Nazi regime and the absolute necessity of winning the war. The fear that held Lilli back from exposing what she knew was real, and it nearly cost her – and their broadcasting team – everything.

Five stars, highly recommend.

BUY LINKS

Universal Buy Link: mybook.to/RadioLies
Link to bookshop: https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/the-shadonetwork-ww2-secret-agent-series-deborah-swift

AUTHOR BIO

Deborah Swift is the English author of eighteen historical novels, including Millennium Award winner Past Encounters, and The Lady’s Slipper, shortlisted for the Impress Prize.

Her most recent books are the Renaissance trilogy based around the life of the poisoner Giulia Tofana, The Poison Keeper and its sequels, one of which won the Coffee Pot Book Club Gold Medal. Recently she has completed a secret agent series set in WW2, the first in the series being The Silk Code.

Deborah used to work as a set and costume designer for theatre and TV and enjoys the research aspect of creating historical fiction, something she loved doing as a scenographer. She likes to write about extraordinary characters set against the background of real historical events. Deborah lives in North Lancashire on the edge of the Lake District, an area made famous by the Romantic Poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Author Links:

Twitter https://twitter.com/swiftstory
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authordeborahswift/
Website: www.deborahswift.com
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/deborahswift1/
Amazon  http://author.to/DeborahSwift
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/deborah-swift

Out Now! The King’s Champion by Nancy Northcott @NancyNorthcott #HistoricalFantasy #WWII #Dunkirk #RomanticFantasy #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

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Historical Fiction author Nancy Northcott is my blog guest today, here with an excerpt from the final volume in her trilogy, The Boar King’s Honor.

BOOK INFORMATION

Book Title: The King’s Champion
Series: The Boar King’s Honor Trilogy
Author: Nancy Northcott
Publication Date: May 1, 2023
Publisher: Falstaff Books
Page Length: 378
Genre: Historical fantasy with romantic elements

EXCERPT

This scene is from Chapter 1. Sebastian Mainwaring, who is working with the evacuation, Operation Dynamo, goes outside for a breath of air and gets a surprise. It has been edited slightly to adjust its length.

The spiral stairs to the surface level made Sebastian’s knee protest, but he ignored it. Fractured during a little foray into Czechoslovakia after the Nazi invasion, it hadn’t healed properly. Still, he’d managed to talk his way into a desk job instead of being mustered out of the army with a war obviously on the way. Detached duty with the War Office was better than a seat on the sidelines.

He pushed open the heavy outer door and walked into the cool evening air. After so many hours underground, the breeze on his face lifted his spirits. He strolled to the edge of the cliff so he could see the harbor far below. A steady stream of ships cruised through the opening in the breakwater to enter the English Channel, as usual. With them tonight, however, went a flotilla of small boats, everything from yachts and Thames excursion boats to tugboats to freight scows to fishing boats.

A vision flashed over his sight. A beach crowded with men in combat gear. Thousands of them sat in masses or snaking lines on the sand. Waves lapped the shore, the water unusually calm. Overhead, Messerschmitts made strafing runs. Men jerked or spasmed and fell to the sand. Some of his fellow soldiers fired back at the attackers with their rifles. The planes were too high, out of range, but he couldn’t fault the men for trying. Helplessness and anger must be the order of the day.

The familiar bitterness welled in his throat. He should’ve been in France. Had trained for years to do just that sort of thing. For nothing, now.

“Sebastian.”

The familiar voice yanked him out of the vision.

At his side stood the ghost of his many-times-great grandfather, Richard Mainwaring, his predecessor as Earl of Hawkstowe from early in the reign of Charles II until late in that of Queen Anne. Though he’d lived into his seventies, he appeared as a man in his early thirties. His dark hair fell to his shoulders, and he wore the knee breeches, doublet, and hose popular in his youth, with lace at his collar and cuffs. His black hair, chiseled features, and blue eyes, all traits of Mainwaring men, might’ve come from Sebastian’s mirror.

No one else would be able to see Richard, but conversation would be awkward if anyone was near. A quick glance reassured Sebastian. Richard looked tired, though, which was unusual. A trick of the light, perhaps? What could weary a ghost?

Sebastian smiled. “Hello, Richard. Why so solemn?”

“There’s a wizard headed for the beach at Dunkirk. When she returns to England, you must speak with her.”

“I assume there are a few in a force the size of the BEF, so—hang on. ‘Her’? Is she a nurse?”

“She’s a journalist, approved by whoever manages such things. She’s been with several units over the last weeks.”

Someone should’ve sent her back to England straight away when the Germans rolled into France, but it was too late to fix that. “Why are you telling me this?”

“She’s a very distant cousin of yours, Kate Shaw. Powerful in her Gifts but untrained.”

Sebastian gestured toward the harbor. “I’ve a bit much on my slate for training a novice, distant cousin or not. I can see if someone at the Merlin Club might help.” The covert group of Gifted operated in Britain’s defense without being bound by edicts of the British wizards’ governing body, the Conclave.

“That won’t do. She doesn’t even know she’s Gifted. Her parents died in an automobile crash when she was a baby. In America. The family who adopted her gave her a good life, but they are practical people and taught her not to believe in magic.”

An image flashed into his mind, a woman standing on a beach amid legions of Tommies. The hair tucked under her tin hat might be brown or dark blond when it was clean. Dirt splotches on her face didn’t conceal the strong, attractive features or her full mouth. She appeared to be a few years younger than his thirty-three. The determined set to her chin and the grim resolve in her eyes drew him.

He banished the image with a shake of his head.

“Again,” Sebastian said, struggling for patience, “I haven’t the time for this.”

Richard regarded him steadily. “She’s a seer.”

“You must be mistaken.” There had never been more than one in a generation and not always even one. In this generation, Sebastian was it.

“I know how rare that Gift is,” Richard told him. “Over the centuries, however, our line has spread far and wide. Each of you carries Miranda’s blood and the potential for her Gift.”

A potential that rarely manifested. Richard’s wife, Miranda, had brought the seer Gift into the family line, but it often skipped generations. To have two at the same time, with war coming, the strategic advantage—

“We’ve often discussed how ill-prepared Britain is for this war,” Richard reminded him. “Kate would be a great help to you, especially if you cannot break the German codes.”

“If she cooperates. If she knows what she’s about. If she even accepts that she has such a Gift.” Yet he didn’t need to be a seer to sense the possibilities her coming offered.

If she made it back.

Blurb:

The Boar King’s Honor Trilogy

A wizard’s misplaced trust
A king wrongly blamed
A bloodline cursed until they clear the king’s name.

Book 3: The King’s Champion

Caught up in the desperate evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from France in the summer of 1940, photojournalist Kate Shaw witnesses death and destruction that trigger disturbing visions. She doesn’t believe in magic and tries to pass them off as survivor guilt or an overactive imagination, but the increasingly intense visions force her to accept that she is not only magically Gifted but a seer.

In Dover, she meets her distant cousin Sebastian Mainwaring, Earl of Hawkstowe and an officer in the British Army. He’s also a seer and is desperate to recruit her rare Gift for the war effort. The fall of France leaves Britain standing alone as the full weight of Nazi military might threatens. Kate’s untrained Gift flares out of control, forcing her to accept Sebastian’s help in conquering it as her ethics compel her to use her ability for the cause that is right.

As this fledgling wizard comes into her own, her visions warn of an impending German invasion, Operation Sealion, which British intelligence confirms. At the same time, desire to help Sebastian, who’s doomed by a family curse arising from a centuries-old murder, leads Kate to a shadowy afterworld between life and death and the trapped, fading souls who are the roots of her family’s story. From the bloody battlefields of France to the salons of London, Kate and Sebastian race against time to free his family’s cursed souls and to stop an invasion that could doom the Allied cause.

The King’s Champion concludes Nancy’s Northcott’s exciting Boar King’s Honor Trilogy.

Buy Links:

This series is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.

Universal Buy Links:   

The Herald of Day   Universal Buy Link
The Steel Rose   Universal Buy Link
The King’s Champion   Universal Buy Link

The Boar King’s Honor Trilogy Links:

Amazon US    Amazon UK   Amazon AU   Amazon CA 

BLOG TOUR PAGE

Catch interviews and more excerpts at the blog tour page:

https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2023/05/blog-tour-kings-champion-by-nancy-northcott.html

Author Bio:

Nancy Northcott’s childhood ambition was to grow up and become Wonder Woman.  Around fourth grade, she realized it was too late to acquire Amazon genes, but she still loved comic books, science fiction, fantasy, history, and romance.

Nancy earned her undergraduate degree in history and particularly enjoyed a summer spent studying Tudor and Stuart England at the University of Oxford. She has given presentations on the Wars of the Roses and Richard III to university classes studying Shakespeare’s play about that king. In addition, she has taught college courses on science fiction, fantasy, and society.

The Boar King’s Honor historical fantasy trilogy combines Nancy’s love of history and magic with her interest in Richard III. She also writes traditional romantic suspense, romantic spy adventures, and two other speculative fiction series, the Light Mage Wars paranormal romances and, with Jeanne Adams, the Outcast Station space mystery series.

Social Media Links:

Website: https://www.NancyNorthcott.com
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/NancyNorthcott
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/nancynorthcottstreetteam
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nancynorthcottauthor/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/nancynorthcott/
Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/nancy-northcott
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Nancy-Northcott/author/B00ITY5KLS
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3468806.Nancy_Northcott

Just Released! Farewell My Boy, by Garrick Jones @Gazrj01 #Adventure #SpyThriller #WWII #LGBTQ

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RELEASE BLITZ

Book Title: Farewell, My Boy

Author: Garrick Jones

Publisher: Moshpit Publications

Cover Artist: Garrick Jones

Release Date: March 1, 2023

Genres: Adventure Spy Thriller

Themes: Strengthening bonds, the love of a child, men at war

Heat Rating: 1 flame

Length: 120 000  words/ 372  pages

It can be read as a standalone. It is Book #3 in the Seventh of December series and does not end on a cliffhanger.

Goodreads Series Link

Buy Links

Amazon US  |  Amazon UK

Blurb 

From the deserts of North Africa to the dark forests in the Third Reich, Tommy Haupner, together with his American lover, Henry “Shorty” Reiter, lead their team in a daring mission to rescue a gifted young savant from Nazi Germany’s T4 euthanasia program.

They are forced to flee in a stolen bus in the dead of night across enemy territory with a precious cargo of 24 handicapped children destined for extermination. In a supreme effort to save their charges and to avoid capture and execution themselves, they mount the most daring and dangerous rescue mission possible, the results of which almost end in disaster.

This third book in The Seventh of December series is an action packed wartime adventure set in the early months of 1942. Stolen aircraft, kidnapped senior Nazi officials, doctors of death and bloody revenge massacres, all of which are intertwined with the love of a helpless, rescued child. “Farewell, My Boy,” deals with not only the frailty of men’s hearts, but the truth that even the bravest are not exempt from the pain of loss, even when it is for a greater good.

Excerpt

Not more than two or three minutes after I’d finished reading what Andrew had sent to me, a voice from behind whispered my name.

“Coco?” I said, turning to see Luc’s anguished face.

“Mon capitain.”

Then he was in my arms, his head on my shoulder, weeping as hard as he had on the night he’d killed his first man in Édouard’s garden, not long after we’d first met him.

“Steve told me,” I whispered against his ear, drawing him into the corner of the hotel foyer and behind a very large jardinière. He wasn’t old enough yet to have any instilled sense of appropriate behaviour when it came to showing emotions in public. Even though he’d been fighting alongside the Resistance since the age of fifteen, it seemed as if there was still a lot of the needy, lonely boy lurking underneath his tough-guy exterior. We’d become close during my time in occupied France last year and he’d “adopted” me. I’d long ago stopped trying to fight it.

“I’m all alone now,” he said eventually, wiping his nose with his forearm.

“Shorty and I are still here …”

“Until you fuck off again and leave me by myself.” He managed a grin as he said it.

“It’s the war—”

“Putain! I know it’s the war, but can’t we just pretend that it’s not happening for five minutes? I just need someone I care about to hold me and to let me behave like a kid again.”

“Come,” I said. “Upstairs. You can tell me all about it.”

“But you’re busy, aren’t you? Gavin told me you were interrogating the German. It doesn’t look like any sort of interrogation I’ve ever been part of.”

“I can’t pick you up any more,” I said, his arms still around my waist.

“I could probably pick you up now.”

“Most likely. Luc, I’m so sorry—”

“I killed him.”

“Killed who?”

“Corporal Löwe.”

“The German with the bladder problem?”

He nodded. “Papa’s body was never recovered, but the town put up a wooden cross in the graveyard for him—I had to go there to say goodbye, despite how dangerous it was. I was about to head back towards La Roche and had got as far as our house, thinking I’d see if there was anything of Papa’s I could take with me as a memory when I saw Löwe throwing all the furniture onto a bonfire. I crept up behind him in the dark and slit his throat, then pushed him into the fire. He couldn’t scream but he thrashed about for a bit.”

He said it just as any man in wartime would speak about the way the men they’d killed had died. Factual, unemotional, as if it was an everyday event. Part of me hated the fact that someone so young could already be so hardened.

“I’ve done worse,” he added.

“You and me both,” I replied then, after a moment or two when we just stood quietly, his head resting on my shoulder, I said, “You’ve got hairs on your chest now.”

He chuckled. “You should see the bushes below.”

“No, thank you.” I tousled his hair, as I’d always done.

“Given it a trial run yet?” Shorty said, coming up behind us.

“Are you serious, mon américain? For French men, it’s a rite of passage. My father couldn’t take me to a brothel on my sixteenth birthday, so Talley accompanied me and sat in the waiting room playing cards with the ladies for an hour.”

“An hour? Was that your first time?”

Luc nodded. “And second, and third, and I nearly managed a fourth.”

Although Shorty and I laughed, it wasn’t hard to see that Luc was putting on a brave face. We’d find time, as we had done on the night I’d said goodbye to him in Bayonne, wondering when and if we’d ever meet again. Damn me if Luc hadn’t crept his way into my heart, in the same way Gladys and Steve had done. Maybe it was fate: we were meant to be lifelong friends … as long as we all somehow managed to survive until the end of the war.

About the Author 

From the outback to the opera.

After a thirty-year career as a professional opera singer, performing as a soloist in opera houses and in concert halls all over the world, I took up a position as lecturer in music in Australia in 1999, at the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music, which is now part of CQUniversity.

Brought up in Australia, between the bush and the beaches of the Eastern suburbs, I retired in 2015 and now live in the tropics, writing, gardening, and finally finding time to enjoy life and to re-establish a connection with who I am after a very busy career on the stage and as an academic.

Author Links

Blog/Website  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Instagram

Pinterest  |  Newsletter Sign-up

Hosted by Gay Book Promotions

My Review: Code Girls, by Liza Mundy @lizamundy #WWII #WomensHistory #Review #KU

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Code Girls, by Liza Mundy, is the third book in my current series of book reviews featuring the role of women in the WWII Allied victory. The first two books – The Atomic City Girls, and Daughters of the Night Sky – are historical fiction based very closely on actual events and characters.

Code Girls is not fiction, even though through most of its pages it reads as smoothly and dramatically as any novel. Following interviews with more than twenty participants and years of meticulous research, much of the data having spent decades as classified and unavailable, Liza Mundy has crafted the story of over 10,000 American women, most freshly out of college, who secretly worked during the war to break the German and Japanese military codes. These women saved thousands of lives and in no small part helped to bring down first Germany, and then Japan.

They – and their superiors – could tell no one about it for decades.

In November, 1941, letters began going out to select women who were seniors at several of the nation’s elite colleges. The letters invited the women to an interview, where the questions simply were whether they liked crossword puzzles and if they were engaged to be married. If they answered appropriately, they were invited to further meetings where they learned about “cryptanalysis” and were told never to utter that word to anyone else. They entered on-campus training in code breaking – again, about which they could tell no one, not even family members. Those who passed the rigorous training were the earliest recruits to facilities being readied for them in Washington, D.C., by both the Navy and the Army.

Over the ensuing years, recruitment criteria broadened, but secrecy, the ability to identify patterns, and having a bright mind remained paramount. Mundy’s account traces the initial American codebreaking developments between the wars, then proceeds through the war years chronologically. By weaving together historical data and material from her interviews, she provides a window into the mundane as well as the dramatic. We learn what interaction was like in the cramped working quarters; how the women were treated by outsiders – who could never know how technical and important their work was – how they spent their relatively few free hours; and, for many of them, how their lives unfolded after the war.

Most of them remained unacknowledged and unsung for the rest of their lives. Some family members never learned what a mother – an aunt – a grandmother – had accomplished, how many ships were sunk because the Navy “happened” to be in the right place at the right time, due to intelligence provided by the codebreakers.

I found this book to be both informative and very engaging, and I highly recommend it.

BUY LINK

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316439894/

Code Girls is available exclusively at Amazon
and is currently on Kindle Unlimited

My Review: The Atomic City Girls, by Janet Beard #WWII #WomensHistory #HerStory #ManhattanProject

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This review is the second book in my three review series (so far!) on women who won the war – women without whose contribution we could so easily have lost.

Daughters of the Night Sky, by Aimee K. Runyan Goodreads Review
The Atomic City Girls, by Janet Beard Goodreads Review
Code Girls, by Liza Mundy (review coming 11/19)

Growing up as a baby boomer, I naturally learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the first atomic bomb tests at Alamogordo, NM. Later, while I was studying at the University of Chicago, a Henry Moore sculpture commemorating the first atomic fusion was unveiled. It is situated on the university’s former football field, the site of Fermi’s laboratory in the 1940s. The sculpture’s shape vaguely resembles a mushroom cloud, which caused considerable controversy, as there was no explosion in Fermi’s successful experiment. But everyone involved in Fermi’s labs knew where the work was headed.

In spite of this awareness, until I picked up The Atomic City Girls, I was only familiar with “Oak Ridge” as the name of a famous country band, whose song “Elvira” I often dance to in line dance classes. Though I knew the term “Manhattan Project,” I had never heard of the massive calutrons that were secretly built in Oak Ridge, TN during World War II to enrich uranium for the atomic bomb. I was also unaware of the enormous and crucial role of so many women in the Manhattan Project.

The Atomic City Girls, written by a granddaughter and grand niece of two women who worked for the Manhattan Project in Tennessee, succeeds brilliantly in remedying this gap in my knowledge. Though the main characters are fictional, their experiences mirror the life and reality of the actual participants in the project.

The city of Oak Ridge was built nearly overnight in a remote Tennessee valley selected for the potential of its surrounding ridges to possibly contain an explosion, should there be a disaster in the project. Out of nothing, in very short order, grew a city of over 75,000, complete with housing, buses, movie theaters, bowling alleys, and other recreational venues. All who worked there were sworn to secrecy, and violations were not tolerated.

The project recruited recent female high school graduates chiefly from the surrounding region. For most of them, it was both their first paying job and their first time living away from their families. The ”girls,” most of them under 20, were trained to sit at a display of dials and keep them within a very narrow range of settings. In eight hour shifts, they did nothing but watch the displays and turn the dials when required. They were never told what the dials meant or what their work was producing.

Beard has created fictional characters both black and white, male and female, line workers and highly trained scientists and engineers. Thus she succeeds in conveying not only the daily experience of the young women, but also the inevitable tensions and cross currents of racial and status differences within the milieu. Within her story lies a microcosm of the changes that emerged in our society following the war in the roles of women and African Americans.

It turns out that the secrecy surrounding this project also impacted me personally. Shortly after reading the book, I was going through some family history accounts my mother passed along to me before her death. There I learned for the first time that her older brother, a chemical engineer at DuPont in Delaware, worked on the Manhattan project. DuPont was the US firm that designed and built the calutrons in Oak Ridge. My mother’s notes gave no further details about his role, so I do not know if his work was on site in Tennessee, or in Delaware during the planning and design stages.

In short, I found this book to be well written, thoroughly researched, highly informative, and very engaging, and I highly recommend it.

Buy Link https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062666711/

Review: Daughters of the Night Sky, by Aimie K. Runyan @aimiekrunyan #Historical Fiction #WomenPilots #WWII

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Apparently I’m a sucker for good WWII books – particularly if they feature more heroism than gore, if they’re true, and most especially, if they highlight the amazing women whose efforts and support were so crucial for the Allied victory. The more I read, the more it becomes clear we could not have won the war without them, and I’m not just talking about Rosie the Riveter.

Lately I’ve hit several books that meet these criteria, and I’ll be reviewing them each in turn. Today, I’m excited about Russian women pilots.

The WWII stories about how we won most often focus on men, and especially on American men, or maybe American and British troops. Rarely do we hear about heroism on the part of our Russian allies – perhaps because for so many of the post war years, Communist Russia was a deeply hated enemy.

Based on meticulous research, author Aimie K. Runyon has penned a dramatic and satisfying novel on the role of a crack group of female Russian pilots. Here are the author’s words:

So often in history, we dismiss women’s work as secondary to men’s. The Night Witches were a shining example of women who defied expectation and served with immense valor. Once I heard about these remarkable women, I had to make their story my own.

Runyan’s lead characters are fictional, but they (and their exploits and dynamics) are based on the very real women who challenged the male hierarchy, excelled at the rigorous training, and carried out mission after mission up until the very end of the war.

These women conducted close-in bombing raids on enemy outposts at the front throughout the latter part of the war, moving ever eastward as Hitler advanced, and then finally following the front and destroying barracks, ammunition, supplies and machines  every time the front advanced west. I never knew.

Their planes were unarmed old training bi-planes—small, outdated, and in need of constant repair.

Every woman on the team knew how to maintain the planes, how to navigate, how to pilot. When one fell, another stepped in to fulfill that role. The size and relative silence of their craft enabled them to fly closer to the ground and drop their ordinance with higher accuracy. This also meant they were more vulnerable, unless they got in and out quickly. That so many survived is testament to their skill and bravery.

Runyan’s story traces a misplaced middle class daughter of a former professor, who with her mother has returned to a small eastern village after her father was slain during the Russian revolution. Now her mother is a laundress, and the daughter must struggle for her education in a backward milieu where women are only expected to clean, cook, have babies, and manage basic household finances.

The daughter’s fight has only just begun. Even though Stalin seeks to make all citizens “equal,” centuries-old traditions are deep set, and the women must study harder, learn more, and perform better than their male counterparts in order to advance. They do.

To give more details would be to create spoilers, so I’ll simply close by saying that I immediately engaged with the lead characters, wanted them all to succeed and thrive, but ultimately found myself satisfied with the author’s handling of what we all know war delivers. Well done.

You can read more about the unit on which Runyan’s story is based at this link, which also has marvelous photographs of the women and their planes:

https://worldofaviation.net/night-witches-soviet-all-female-588th-night-bomber-regiment/