This blog is part book review and part cautionary tale. I’ll start with a word of caution. If you allow your daughter to grow up to be a librarian, you can count on your to-be-read stack of books to grow like Southern kudzu from her suggestions, even if your list gets no help from other sources. If she knows your preferred genre (historical fiction) and preferred time period (WWII), you may be tempted to move these recommendations to the top of your stack. You can see how problems will arise.
Her current recommendation was The Alice Network by Kate Quinn. This historical fiction switches between and spans both WWI and WWII with an actual historical network of women spies as its basis. You don’t want to miss the author’s back matter, which you may read either before or after the book to find out how real history figures into her novel. Charlie St. Clair in the book’s present day World War II, takes her disgrace of an unwed pregnancy to Europe with a goal of finding her beloved cousin Rose. Rose disappeared in the wake of the second war. Charlie has already lost her brother Jack to suicide caused by his own leftover war trauma, and she doesn’t intend to lose anyone else. Her only clue for this search is on a small piece of paper in her pocket with an address and the name Eve Gardiner. Eve was a member of the Alice Network in WWI. How the two women combine searches from their pasts with the help of a chauffeur who has his own history makes a story to keep the reader up at night.
One other bit of warning before I close this cautionary tale – if you don’t censor what your daughter reads as she grows up, she may not censor the books she recommends to you. There was some explicit sexual content, but the graphic violence was the thing that made me glad I had a couple of hours after I finished reading the book for my blood pressure to recede before I went to bed! As for my “to-be-read” stack, I am now looking to see what else Kate Quinn wrote.