Good Night, Irene | Luis Alberto Urrea

This story hit all of my sweet spots — well-written stories set in wartime of WWII (or WWI, for that matter), stories of female friendships and how life sustaining they are, and revealing stories about the incredible and largely unrecognized contributions of women during times of crisis and key points in history. 

I think we’ve all read a few of these lately both fiction and nonfiction. My understanding is that as intelligence from the wars has been declassified, it’s possible to learn more about these contributions. I heard the author of Code Girls, Liza Mundy, speak at Portland Arts & Lectures (or maybe it was Oregon Historical Society) and she said that even after decades, many of the women she interviewed were reluctant or even refused to talk with her because they hadn’t heard that they were allowed to. Even their families didn’t know about their activities. Sadly many of these women died before they could tell their stories to the people closest to them. Hidden Figures, Bletchley Park, Code Girls, A Woman of No Importance (nonfiction) all fall into this category of “women finally getting their due.” 

But back to Good Night, Irene — what great characters! Just like countless military buddy movies, we see women from different backgrounds all thrown together as they discover more about what they have in common than what sets them apart. If only that happened in the current, real world, right? The stories of how these Red Cross “donut dollies” (who were unpaid and under-appreciated as being simply morale-boosters for the soldiers) are so poignant and sometimes frightening. And the fact that these women were so close to the front with little support is pretty shocking. 

But what women they were, and how great is it that at least one of them had a world-class novelist son to be inspired by her story.