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.)
