In an engrossing read, three-time Christy Award-winner Austin (All She Ever
Wanted; Hidden Places) explores the lives of four women in smalltown Michigan
during WWII. The unlikely quartet of heroines a mouthy Italian, a farm girl
desperate to go to college, a spinster schoolteacher who's inherited a
fortune, and a bored housewife meet and become fast friends when they take
Rosie the Riveter jobs at a local factory. On one level, the novel is simply
about the bonds that form among the principals, recalling Whitney Otto's How
to Make an American Quilt and Lynne Hinton's Friendship Cake. But the subtext,
as the title suggests, is about gender roles. Can and should women defy their
husbands? What does the Bible say about wifely obedience? Such questions
present themselves urgently to each of the four protagonists (and, one
imagines, to many of Austin's female evangelical readers). Austin sprinkles
some lovely images throughout a newborn's fingernails "like drops of candle
wax" and a humorous depiction of inadvertently tipsy church ladies will have
readers in stitches. All in all, Austin offers a very enjoyable journey to an
earlier wartime America. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
