September CatWoman: Women During War

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This month we are reading about women and war. This is a broad subject as wars have been around since the dawn of mankind. From simply keeping the home fires burning and morale up, to playing a larger role, women have evolved from staying in the background to front line exposure.

Although in the past women have had secondary roles when it came to war, things are changing and today we can see women on the front line, doing as much soldiering as men. In the past women were used as backup – as drivers and secretaries and filling male civilian positions. Nursing has always been an important part of the war machine and an important role for women to take up. During times of war some women have had to make extreme sacrifices to keep their loved ones safe so we find stories about women as spies, as well as women who protect and keep their families safe. If you prefer to step away from reality, there are also many fantasy and sci-fi books that touch on this subject as well.

Please let us know here what you are going to be reading and what you thought of it when you are finished. Also the Wiki for listing your reads can be found here: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/CATWoman_2022

Here are some examples of books by women about women caught up in the horrors of war:

Non-Fiction

: Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott – American Civil War
: The Girls Come Marching Home by Kristen Holmstedt – War in Iraq
: The Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn by Caroline Moorhead – WW II
: Wolves At the Door by Judith L. Pearson – WW II

Fiction

: The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang – Fantasy
: Sand Queen by Helen Benedict – War in Iraq
: Celia Garth by Gwen Bristow – American Revolution
: Henrietta Sees It Through by Joyce Dennys – WW II
: The Return by Victoria Hislop – Spanish Civil War
: The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara – Sierra Leone Civil War
: A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes – The Trojan War
: The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli – Vietnam War
: The War Nurses by Lizzie Page – WW I
: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah – WW II

I am planning on reading Spam Tomorrow by Verily Anderson.

I have a few options, but leaning toward the one that's been on my tbr the longest (I think); I believe it's also my only nonfiction in this list:

- To See You Again / Betty Schimmel
- The Sandcastle Girls / Chris Bohjalian
- The Rose Code / Kate Quinn
- The Lost Girls of Paris / Pam Jenoff

I'm planning to read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (WWII-2 sisters)

I recently read Never Say Goodbye by Hilary Green a novel about a woman spy in WWII.

I may read The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor

I have Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott scheduled for this.

I read The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn earlier this year and it's probably going to be my best read of the year (at least right now). It's the story of a Russian female sniper during WWII.

I have a several on my TBR I could read. I'm leaning toward Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon and/or The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah.

I'm going to read a book from my shelf that I meant to read last year When Winter Returns. It's the fourth installment of the Rosie Winter series featuring Rosie Winter and her best friend Jayne and their adventures during World War II.

I'm hoping to read The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman.

I'm thinking of In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen set in WWII, or Ben Macintyre's Agent Sonya: Moscow's most daring wartime spy.

>9 Jackie_K: good book!
>10 VivienneR: both good books!

I’m going to read the latest Maisie Dobbs book, A Sunlit Weapon by Jacqueline Winspear.

>11 Tess_W: Glad to hear it!

A little while ago, I finished the first volume of Une jeune femme en guerre by Maryse Rouy, a French writer living in Quebec. It's about a young woman trying to live an independent life in Montreal during WWII.

I liked the novel very much and have been meaning to read the second volume, so I will plan to do that for this challenge. Unfortunately, I think this book is available only in French.

I finished The Alice Network by Kate Quinn. Women spies, WWi & WWII
Now reading Powers of Endurance: Women in Wartime, 1861-1865

A few years ago I read Fighting France, in which Edith Wharton writes about her time in WWI as journalist covering the front. It was gripping.

I may read Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell, a memoir about the London Blitz years.

I just read D E Stevenson's Spring Magic, which fits right in here. It's a gentle, slow-moving romance with a heroine who is a real drip, but it was written during the blitz and published in 1942, so the descriptions of life during WWII make it interesting.

>16 kac522: I can recommend Chelsea Concerto.

I'm reading The Dressmaker's Gift, women at a fashion house in Paris actually working as spies. Great beginning!

I finished this a little early as I took a brief break to read it from reading a much longer book. This is the 17th book in the excellent Maisie Dobbs novels. The story takes place in the autumn of 1942, and features the women ferry pilots in the British Air Transport Auxiliary, and the visit to British soil by United States First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. A Sunlit Weapon by Jacqueline Winspear.

I completed The Dressmaker's Gift which was a disappointment with a very dysfunctional dual timeline. Story of seamstresses and the Nazi occupation of France during WWII.

I've read Born to be Soldiers: Those Plucky Women of World War II by Kayleen Reusser, which also was a disappointment. I had purchased the book after noticing that our OLLI adult education program is sponsoring an author talk on this particular book in October, and that it would fit the September CATWoman challenge. However, when I started reading this book, I wondered whom the audience is supposed to be, YA or adult. Also, in my opinion, the title is very misleading by calling these women soldiers; they are mostly nurses, pilots (who did not finish their training until the war was nearly over), and code breakers. I think of soldiers as being fighters out in the field. 13 women are covered in approximately 140 pages. The backgrounds of the women are briefly told with most of the text being about their time in the military even if it was relatively brief. Very little is told about the women after their military experiences; usually the name of their husband and the number of children they had. A photograph of each woman in her military uniform is included; however, it appears at the end of her section instead of the beginning, and often is facing the beginning of the story of another woman.

The book also includes a two-page history of American women at war -- from the Revolutionary War through World War II but nothing more current.

I strongly recommend The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos as a moving narrative history of young Jewish women in their teens and early twenties who served as couriers and fighters during WWII.

I have completed Spam Tomorrow by Verily Anderson, a memoir of life in London and the countryside during WW II. The author kept the book quite light and humorous although she did occasionally touch on more serious matters.

I read The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle by Jennifer Ryan, which follows three women whose lives are changed by World War II. I thought the book was just okay, but I was interested to learn that the wedding dress sewing circle itself was based on true events!

I've done a reread of Henrietta's War: News From the Home Front 1939-1942. This is a series of short articles published in Sketch magazine during the war. They are done as letters sent from Henrietta to a childhood friend who is in the Army. He had wanted her to keep him informed about life in their village (deemed "safe") during the war. They were originally meant to entertain and they still do.

The October thread is now up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/344175

I finished Speak, Silence by Kim Echlin. It is quite a powerful and disturbing book, about a journalist who travels to The Hague and attends war crime trials related to the Bosnian war. She hears the personal stories of women who were victims of rape and other war crimes.

I have finished Churchill m'a menti, a fictionalised account of the German occupation of Jersey and the camp on Alderney.

I just finished Agent Sonya by Ben Macintyre, which was a little disappointing.
Sonya Burton, born Ursula Kuczynski in a Jewish family in Berlin, was a Communist supporter from an early age. She went on to spy for the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s in England, Poland, and China, while she conveniently ignored the monstrous crimes perpetrated by those she supported. As always, Macintyre's research is impeccable, but I found this book to be the least appealing by the author.

I'm almost finished Now is the Hour by Hilary Green, an author recommended by Robertgreaves that I'm enjoying a lot. Thank you, Robert.

>29 VivienneR: Glad to hear you're enjoying her work, Vivienne. I haven't read that one, only the duology, We'll Meet Again and Never Say Goodbye.

To See You Again / Betty Schimmel
4 stars

Early during WWII, Betty and her Jewish family moved out of Czechoslovakia to Hungary. It was there that Betty (at 13 years old) met Richie. They fell madly in love with one another and vowed to marry one day. But they were separated in the last year of the war and though Betty, her mother, sister, and brother all survived, Betty could not find Richie after the war ended. At the encouragement of her mother, although Betty didn’t love him, she married Otto, who loved her very much. But she never lost her love for Richie and while married decades to Otto (and she had three children with him), she always looked for Richie.

I thought the first half during the war was better. Yes, the Holocaust is awful, but it was amazing that all in Betty’s family survived except for her father, much due to her mother’s encouragement, support, and resilience. I hadn’t read anything about Hungary (and its occupation) during the war until now. I felt really badly for Otto as Betty continually commiserated about losing Richie. Although he was almost never home (always working), which was hard on Betty, especially once the kids came along.

I read The Liberation, starting in WW2 in Italy, it then covered a young woman trying to provide for her family in a country still under foreign military presence.

I read My Father's Moon by Elizabeth Jolley, in which the main character is a student nurse in an English hospital during World War II.

Super late finishing this, but I have just finished The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman, a true story about the family who ran Warsaw Zoo before and during WW2, and how during the German occupation of Warsaw the zoo became a haven for Jews escaping the Warsaw Ghetto. I enjoyed it, it read in many parts like historical fiction (in a good way!), although I did find that there was a bit of 'research dumping', 'look at all the things I found out' which I found a bit distracting from the flow of the narrative. Still definitely recommend it though, it was a fascinating account.