Weekly Reader: Home Front Girls by Suzanne Hayes and Loretta Nyhan; Moving and Sweet Novel About Long Distance Friendship Between WWII Wives

 

Weekly Reader: Home Front Girls by Suzanne Hayes and Loretta Nyhan; Moving and Sweet Novel About Long Distance Friendship Between WWII Wives

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: 

Wartime can make the strangest alliances and friendships. People who would never befriend or even associate with each other from different backgrounds, places, and statuses become allies, simply because they are fighting an enemy army or are at home while friends or family members are doing the fighting.

That is the situation found in Suzanne Hayes and Loretta Nyhan's Home Front Girls, a moving and sweet novel about two American women of different ages, classes, backgrounds, and parts of the country who become pen pals while their husbands fight in WWII.

Glory Whitehall, a young mother from Rockport, Massachusetts whose husband, Robert, is fighting overseas receives one of several addresses, presented by her church, to write to other military wives. Glory selects one with the lovely name of "Garden Witch." 

The "Garden Witch" is in reality Rita Vicenzo, a professor's wife from Iowa City, Iowa whose husband, Sal, is also fighting.

On the surface, the women would have nothing in common. Glory is in her 20's, has one young child and is expecting another, and is from a wealthy family. Rita is in her 40's with an adult son and is from an immigrant family.  Over two years of love, humor, tears, marriage, enlistment, anxiety, rekindling of romance, tested fidelities, and tremendous agonizing loss, the two unlikely women become best friends united by their grief and worry.

As the Readers peer into Glory and Rita's correspondence, they learn how similar and yet how different their lives really are. Both of them are worried about their husbands fighting and both feel isolated within their communities because of that anxiety even though they are surrounded by intrusive but well meaning gossipy neighbors, trying to be helpful but not always helpful female friends, and family members, especially children, with problems of their own.

As with many of the women whose husbands were fighting in WWII, the deuteragonists try to maintain brave supportive faces as they work, create victory gardens, use their ration coupons, attend military support rallies and fundraisers, and raise their children. However, by writing to each other, another woman who has been in the same situation as them, they can convey their worst fears and anxieties. They can let their guards down and reveal their vulnerabilities that they keep hidden from the people around them.

The book also explores their different issues and how they deal with them and help each other. Glory is younger and more impetuous. With Robert gone and two small children, she clings to her childhood friend, Levi. Levi has been a close friend to Glory and Robert and since he has a bad heart, he can't serve in the war. He helps Glory and becomes a surrogate father to her children. It isn't too long before Levi starts expressing feelings that he wouldn't normally express if Robert weren't around. Glory gives into her loneliness and deepest emotions and reciprocates her feelings towards Levi, despite Rita's objections. Glory finds in Levi someone to share her heart aching loneliness, the need to be with someone, that she has felt since Robert's been away. 

Rita also has problems of her own, particularly concerning her adult son, Tobias. Tobias has been romantically involved with a bar owner's daughter, Roylene. Things become more complicated when Roylene becomes pregnant and Tobias enlists before they are married. Despite her own reservations about the situation, Rita provides emotional and physical support to Roylene, becoming a mother figure to her and defending her status as an unwed young mother. Rita relates to Roylene's status as an outsider. She knows what it's like to be judged by a small town so she provides Roylene, the support that she needs.

Rita and Glory's lives change as they encounter death and injury from war. That's when their strengths are truly tested and they depend on not only their own resourcefulness and independence, but the love of the people around them and each other to get through the ultimate hardship of the war.

What makes this book's writing style is the way in which it was constructed. According to the Reader's Guide, Home Front Girls was written via emails between Hayes and Nyhan with each woman taking each character. Hayes, being younger, took the more free spirited and flirtatious Glory while Nyhan, being older took the view of the sardonic and opinionated Rita. In fact, like their characters, Hayes and Nyhan never physically encountered each other during the work of the book. They met after the book's publication and have since met other times (as their leads eventually do as well solidifying their friendship).  Knowing that the book was written similar to how the characters lived, physically separate but emotionally close adds a sense of unmistakable duality between creators and their creations.

Home Front Girls is a novel that explores the deep friendship that women share as they support each other through stress and happiness, whether getting through war or writing a book.