Band of Sisters by Lauren Willig

One little known story from World War I is brought to life in Lauren Willig’s excellent novel about a group of Smith College alumnae who volunteer for the war effort by assisting French villagers in the war zone.  Based on a voluminous collection of letters and diaries housed at Smith, every event in the novel actually took place although the characters are wholly or partially creations of the author.

It is captivating stuff.  This one small group of women pulled together in a few short months to pack their bags and travel to France to give social, educational, medical, and agricultural support to the people left in devastated villages—with little training, a lot of skepticism on the part of the Red Cross and the British army, and certainly without much knowledge of what the war was like and the horrific casualties and injuries it was producing.  

Stationed very near the front lines, they set up a base in one village and traveled out in various conveyances to the surrounding countryside.  Their work proceeded in fits and starts, hampered by personality conflicts, language barriers, lack of supplies, and sometimes, the hilarious consequences of not knowing the difference between roosters and hens.

Much of the interest comes from watching these characters develop a camaraderie based on necessity and on friendship, but for the three main characters, it means overcoming longstanding misunderstandings: Kate Moran for being a scholarship student from a lower social class; Emmy Van Alden for being overshadowed by her activist mother; Julia Prine, for family financial problems and difficulties of being a female medical doctor.  

Letters home frame the action of the story and reveal much about the war, and the author’s description of daily life and the women’s attempts to improve it are an excellent addition to WWI literature.  The growing crescendo of an advancing army is both well-written and plotted to provide a narrative arc that keeps the story moving.  This is a long book but never slow!

The audio version is well worth listening to and narrator Julia Whelan wonderfully portrays the various characters.

Many thanks to the publisher and to Libro.fm for an advance audio copy.  Band of Sisters will be published on March 2.