This month in BookTrib, we are celebrating women’s fiction titles that showcase stories of families and individuals going to war, lost at war or still struggling with the trauma post-war. It may be the fear of a loved one not returning, or the dismay when you realize the loved one who’s returned to you is unrecognizable physically or emotionally.
Perhaps the war is over but the setting for the book is in a town or city decimated by war. Perhaps the war set up alliances of power that is completely skewed post-war. Or perhaps it is a women’s suspense story that plays out on veterans’ day and that is its only connection to a war.
Escaping the Whale by Ruth Rotkowitz
Escaping the Whale by Ruth Rotkowitz (Amsterdam Publishing)
In 1980 Brooklyn, New York, to everyone who knows her, 28-year-old Marcia Gold leads the perfect life. A handsome successful boyfriend and a good job as a high school guidance counselor specializing in helping pregnant teens.
However, beneath the shiny surface lurks another reality. Frightening, debilitating panic attacks, which she keeps secret, torment her. As a child of Jewish Holocaust survivors, her family’s traumas have become her own and the Iranian hostage situation dominating the news compounds her inner terror.
A series of crises forces Marcia to a breaking point. Desperate to free herself from her inner prison, she concocts a plan to be reborn as a new person. Unfortunately, her plan creates its own problems. Can she find another path out of her psychic pain, one that will lead her to true normalcy and release her from the legacy of her parents’ suffering?
Notes of Love and War by Betty Bolte
Notes of Love and War by Betty Bolte (Mystic Owl Publishing)
Audrey Harper needs more than home and hearth to satisfy her self-worth. Working as a music critic for the Baltimore Daily during WWII, she’s enjoyed both financial freedom and personal satisfaction. When she steps into a man’s job and does it better than he did she is still doubted as to her ability even as she confronts a spy.
When she uncovers evidence of German spies working to sabotage a secret bomber plane being manufactured in her beloved city, she must choose between her sense of duty to protect her city and the urgings of her boss, her family, and her fiancé to turn over her evidence to the authorities. But when her choices lead her and her sister into danger, she is forced to risk life and limb to save her sister and bring the spies to justice.
The Good Luck Stone by Heather Bell Adams
The Good Luck Stone by Heather Bell Adams (Haywire Books)
At 90 years old, Audrey Thorpe, a ninety-year-old Savannah socialite, has lived a lie for 70 years since serving as a nurse in the South Pacific and making a life-altering decision that impacted her two closest friends. Audrey still lives in a historic mansion on palm-tree-lined Victory Drive, determined to retain her independence. But when her health begins to fade, her family hires a part-time caretaker, Laurel.
The two women seem to bond — until Audrey disappears. Unbeknownst to Laurel, Audrey receives a shocking letter and seizes one last chance to set the record straight. As the story moves between the verdant jungles of the war-torn Philippines and the glitter of modern-day Savannah, friendships new and old are tested. Along the way, Audrey grapples with one of life’s heart-wrenching truths: You can only outrun your secrets for so long.
Threshing of Straw by Kim Catron
Threshing of Straw by Kim Catron (Columbus Press)
Upon returning from the Korean War, Curtis finds love and a soon-to-be ready-made family with Rose. But the war has left scars, and when his PTSD results in him injuring Rose, Curtis worries that he is only making life worse for his wife and daughter, Macey May.
And worst of all, he worries that he won’t be able to protect Macey May when she most needs him. When Curtis decides to leave before he destroys whatever is left of his memory, he never imagined that there’d be one more heroic deed for him to do, one last chance to be remembered for the good man he was before the war.
The Road Remembered by Kaye D. Schmitz
The Road Remembered by Kaye D. Schmitz (Kensington Studios Press)
In the final months of World War II, Sam Ryan takes his place as a new soldier in the 89th Infantry Division on the front lines in Europe. He’s trained to kill but struggles with taking the life of another human being, a contradiction with the way he was raised. How, he wonders, will he ever reconcile the action his head dictates with the way his heart feels about it?
On the other side of the war, Gerda Ziegler’s heart aches over the monster her beloved Germany has become. But she confronts the Nazi soldiers who guard the Jewish-only sector in Zwickau and is appalled to learn that a Jewish baby will be killed because of a large birthmark. Can she manage to whisk the child away right under the noses of the brutal Nazis?
Sam and Gerda face their enemies head-on, but they also battle internal elements on their own sides of the fighting that violate their shared values of humanity. They meet under the worst of circumstances but find a way to help each other through the trauma of war.
We Shall Not Shatter by Elaine Stock
We Shall Not Shatter by Elaine Stock (Amsterdam Publishers)
An unforgettable story of friendship, family and hope as two courageous young women, Zofia and Aanya, face one of history’s most horrific tragedies.
Brzeziny, Poland, 1939 Zofia’s comfortable lifestyle overturns when her husband, Jabez, who monitors Nazi activity, has gone missing. Rather than fleeing the country with her young son, as she had promised Jabez who fears retaliation, she decides to stay to protect her family and her friend since childhood, Aanya who is Jewish and deaf.
Zofia and Aanya are as close as sisters but as war approaches their Polish town and Hitler’s Third Reich revs up its control of the world, they must face decisions with no-going-back consequences. Step by step, holding onto the expectation that the madness of hatred and prejudice would soon end, they dare to live the best possible in the hope their friendship survives and flourish. But the choices they make will change the meaning of family, home, and their precious friendship.
Inspired by the author’s paternal heritage from Brzeziny, this is a heartbreaking yet beautiful story of two women who are determined to remain united in friendship and to live freely despite the odds.
The Sweetheart Locket by Jen Gilroy
The Sweetheart Locket by Jen Gilroy (Orion Dash)
What if the key to your present lies in the past?
London 1939: On the eve of the Second World War, Canadian Maggie Wyndham defies her family and stays in England to do her bit for the war effort. Torn between two countries, two men and living a life of lies working as a secret agent for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Maggie’s Royal Air Force (RAF) sweetheart locket is part of who she is … and who she isn’t.
San Francisco 2019: Over twenty years after Maggie’s death, her daughter Millie and granddaughter Willow take a DNA test that’s supposed to be a bit of fun but instead yields unexpected results. Willow has always treasured her grandmother’s sweetheart locket, both a family heirloom and a symbol of her grandparents’ love story. But now she doesn’t know what to believe. She embarks on a search for the truth, one she doesn’t know will reveal far more about herself…
Her Own Legacy by Debra Borchert
Her Own Legacy by Debra Borchert (Le Vin Press)
Her Own Legacy, the first in the Château de Verzat series in which a young woman, Joliette de Verzat, fights for the lives of the four hundred families who depend upon her ancestors’ vineyard that produces the finest wines in France as the French Revolution erupts. When thousands of revolutionaries attack Versailles, Joliette is caught the battle and kills a peasant to save her lover. She must flee Paris and make heartbreaking sacrifices to ensure the lives and safety of the families who live and work on her family estate, which revolutionaries threaten to burn, and the new government is determined to seize.
Clara in a Time of War by C.J. McGroarty
Clara in a Time of War by C.J. McGroarty (Atmosphere Press)
Pennsylvania, 1777: As war rages in the American colonies, Clara Fletcher struggles to make do on her Chester County farm while her husband is off in the fight. Lonely in the woods, with no hope of returning to her beloved Philadelphia, she has no other wish than to survive. Then, one morning her son finds a wounded man in the carriage house and her life takes an unexpected turn.
The man is Declan O’Reilly, and as Clara nurses him back to life, she finds in this mysterious stranger a kindred spirit and the welcome spark of love. But day by day the war is moving closer to her door as the British Army embarks on its Philadelphia Campaign. And once Declan O’Reilly moves on, an even bigger threat will loom: a secret Clara hopes to keep hidden as long as she can, a secret that could ruin her.
I’ll Be Seeing You by Joanne Kukanza Easley
I’ll Be Seeing You by Joanne Kukanza Easley (Red Boots Press)
A saga spanning five decades, I’ll Be Seeing You, explores the traumas of war and one woman’s life, with and without alcohol to numb the pain.
Lauren Eaton is discovered by a modeling scout at the 1940 Fort Worth Stock Show Parade, and she leaves her bucolic ranch life to move to Manhattan for a glamorous career. She becomes pregnant by a Frenchman, who is unaware of her condition and returns to France to fight in the Resistance. Broken-hearted, she gives up the baby for adoption and later marries a man who enlists in WW II and is killed in battle, which leads her to a downward spiral into alcoholism and promiscuity. By twenty-four, she’s been widowed and divorced and has developed a pattern of fleeing her problems by changing locations.
After she ends her third marriage to a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, Lauren’s last escape lands her in Austin, where, after ten chaotic years, she achieves lasting sobriety and starts a successful business, but happiness eludes her.
Fast forward to 1985. With a history of burning bridges and never looking back, Lauren is stunned when Brett, her third husband, resurfaces, wanting to reconcile after thirty-three years. The losses and regrets of the past engulf her. Guilt at the way she treated Brett forces Lauren to seek the counsel of Jane, a long-time friend from AA. In the end, the choice has to be Lauren’s. Can she forgive herself for past mistakes and open her heart again?
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