{"id":3949,"date":"2021-02-19T06:01:23","date_gmt":"2021-02-19T14:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3949"},"modified":"2021-02-19T06:01:23","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T14:01:23","slug":"lauren-willig-band-of-sisters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/lauren-willig-band-of-sisters\/","title":{"rendered":"Lauren Willig: Band of Sisters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is a slightly different book for Lauren Willig, as it\u2019s more straight up history than romance or mystery.\u00a0 It\u2019s about a group of women, Smith College alums, graduating right before WWI, who form a relief unit and head to France to help the victims of the war in the French countryside.\u00a0 They set sail for Paris in the summer of 1917, with ideas of what Paris will be like wildly out of sync with wartime Paris.\u00a0 One girl is planning to buy her trousseau.<\/p>\n

The two central characters are Kate, a scholarship girl at Smith who has been working as a French tutor, and Emmie, a wealthy daughter of a politically active suffragette.\u00a0 The two had been best friends at Smith \u2013 Emmie\u2019s sweet goofiness balanced by Kate\u2019s practicality.\u00a0 Kate wears a pretty big chip on her shoulder, though, and it often gets in the way of the friendship.\u00a0 When they arrive in Paris, everything is topsy turvy.<\/p>\n

The place they were supposed to stay isn\u2019t big enough, so Kate corrals the attic for them and they wait in Paris for passes, collecting goods they\u2019ll need for the countryside, before heading to their ultimate destination, Gr\u00e9court, just 7 or so miles from the front.\u00a0 They have to find livestock, assemble the trucks they\u2019ll need (which arrive in parts), and lay in all kinds of supplies \u2013 blankets, books, pots, etc.\u00a0 The list is long and when the girls finally arrive at their destination, they feel woefully unprepared.<\/p>\n

The town is a ruin \u2013 the Germans have laid waste to it \u2013 and many of the townspeople are living in the ruins of the castle which has no roof.\u00a0 The girls get a preassembled canvas barracks, so they do have a roof, but no one has warned them about the rain and mud and cold or the many, many families they\u2019ll be trying to help.\u00a0 The two doctors in their group are quickly put to work and are quickly overwhelmed.<\/p>\n

All of the girls evolve while they are in France, finding the skills they need \u2013 one is good with animals, one with children, etc.\u00a0 Kate is good at mechanics, driving, and organization.\u00a0 Emmie, who has a warm soul, is good at reaching out and figuring out what people need most and then trying to get it to them.\u00a0 Their leader, Mrs. Rutherford, seems to conjure needed things out of thin air but a few of the girls are out to get her, and she\u2019s eventually sent on her way, leaving Kate mostly in charge.<\/p>\n

This is also Kate and Emmie\u2019s story, so the gap between them is painful and hard to read about.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of those friendship gaps that if not repaired will kill the friendship altogether.\u00a0 Willig writes beautifully and not at all sentimentally about female friendship, and it\u2019s a true strength of this lovely, stuffed novel.\u00a0 The way the women learn to work together and to bond to one another is wonderful to read about.<\/p>\n

These women of Smith are truly an underreported, underrated story of WWI and Willig has brought their story to full, glorious light, often framing it with letters home (using a combination of real and fictional letters).\u00a0 It gives a feel of the desperation, the cold, and she sheer unimaginable amount of work.\u00a0 When they are forced to retreat toward the end of the novel it\u2019s incredibly heartbreaking.\u00a0 Willig brings her novelist\u2019s eye and sense of suspense and pacing to her story, providing readers with an ultimately satisfying wrap up.\u00a0 This is a book that will stick with you long after you\u2019ve finished the last page.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a slightly different book for Lauren Willig, as it\u2019s more straight up history than romance or mystery.\u00a0 It\u2019s about a group of women, Smith College alums, graduating right before WWI, who form a relief unit and head to France to help the victims of the war in the French countryside.\u00a0 They set sail … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[513,512,321,10,131,511,291,84],"class_list":["post-3949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-band-of-sisters","tag-female-friendship","tag-france","tag-historical","tag-lauren-willig","tag-smith-college","tag-william-morrow","tag-wwi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3951,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949\/revisions\/3951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}