By coincidence, the same month I got around to reading it, I also read Fannie Flagg's newest novel, The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion -- not in my usual genres, but the very local book group was reading it and invited me to share the process. To my delight, I found it overlapped the historical ground of Elizabeth Wein's book, just on the other side of the Atlantic. If you're interested in how women slowly but surely moved into flying planes during that war, read both.
Best of all, for those of us wrestling on a daily basis with writing -- or evaluating -- mysteries that rely on other times and other cultures, here's a wonderful piece from Wein on "Authority and Authenticity." Her final line still gives me shivers: "Tell the world. For all the faults and flaws of my telling, I have no choice but to tell this story as best I can."
