In 1943, Irene Woodward abandons an abusive fiancé in New York to enlist with the Red Cross and head to Europe. She makes fast friends in training with Dorothy Dunford, a towering Midwesterner with a ferocious wit. Together they are part of an elite group of women, nicknamed Donut Dollies, who command military vehicles called Clubmobiles at the front line, providing camaraderie and a taste of home that may be the only solace before troops head into battle.

After D-Day, these two intrepid friends join the Allied soldiers streaming into France. Their time in Europe will see them embroiled in danger, from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Buchenwald. Through her friendship with Dorothy, and a love affair with a courageous American fighter pilot named Hans, Irene learns to trust again. Her most fervent hope, which becomes more precarious by the day, is for all three of them to survive the war intact.

Taking as inspiration his mother’s own Red Cross service, Luis Alberto Urrea has delivered an overlooked story of women’s heroism in World War II. With its affecting and uplifting portrait of friendship and valor in harrowing circumstances, Good Night, Irene powerfully demonstrates yet again that Urrea’s “gifts as a storyteller are prodigious” (NPR).

I love Jane Austen. It may be time to re-read my collection.

"I discovered Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval in the middle of the night on a family trip to Montreal nearly twenty years ago. I was sitting up in bed nursing my then six-week-old daughter while reading a stack of library books I had brought along for my sons. In an illustrated children’s book about Jacques Cartier, I read a passage that stopped me short. It went something like this: In 1542, a nobleman named Jean-François Roberval sailed separately with colonists to meet with Cartier in what is now called Canada. Roberval brought along his young ward, Marguerite de la Rocque who annoyed him by having an affair aboard ship. Roberval marooned Marguerite and her lover on an island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence where she managed to survive for more than two years while fighting off polar bears."