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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
WWII from a woman's perspective, November 14, 2006
In December 1941 Japan launched a surprise attack against Pearl Harbor causing widespread panic and devastation. President Roosevelt meets with high-level Washington officials and is expected to ask Congress to declare war. While the President is getting ready to declare war, every home in Seneca, Michigan is focused on the radio, listening intently to news reports for updates on what the United States plans to do.
A Woman's Place is about four women who answer the call to do something useful related to the war effort.
Virginia, an easily intimated housewife, breaks the mode of what an ideal housewife is, according to her husband, or so she thinks. Neither she nor her husband is prepared for the confident and strong woman she becomes.
Rosa is street wise and newly married to a sailor she barely knows. Living with her in-laws in a household with demanding rules, she discovers love and acceptance, despite her fiery nature.
Helen is lonely and elderly. A former school teacher, she is met with the skepticism that she is capable of menial work, however it is this call to the war effort that forces her to face her fears and befriend these women.
Jean is a natural leader and a twin. Her desire to become the woman God wants her to be collides with what her boyfriend wants in a wife. There has to be more to a partnership than just having babies and running a household.
This was a very satisfying book. Lynn Austin captured the call to arms through the lives of these women who wanted to participate in the war effort. Each of their stories reflects how they faced discrimination and conflict in a time when the roles of men and women were changing.
Armchair Interviews says: Unusual look at WWII from a woman's perspective.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent!, January 28, 2007
Prolific author, Lynn Austin, well know for her biblical and American Civil War novels brings to life the early 1940's to tell the story of four woman whose lives are forever changed by the Second World War.
Four women, brought together by America's call for women to aid the war effort, take jobs at the Stockton Shipworks and train in electronics. Newly married Rosa wants to escape the disapproval of her parents-in-law while her husband Dirk fights overseas, Jean, the youngest, dreams of going to college, Helen is all alone after the death of her elderly parents and the wealth left to her is simply not enough and Virginia is desperately afraid she has become nothing more than a "servant" to her husband and sons. Working as a team the women discover that their differences are not enough to stand in the way of friendship. They discover abilities previously untapped and challenges never before experienced. When tragedy strikes and prejudice threatens to separate them these women find strength and hope in eachother and discover that faith and friendship is truly enough to overcome all things.
Lynn Austin has written a beautiful novel that held my interest throughout all of its 446 pages. Each chapter is written from the perspective of one of the characters but this is not a distraction or hard to follow. Despite finding Virginia's timidity irritating in the early chapters she soon developed into a character I understood more as her personality and circumstances were revealed. The remaining three characters were fascinating and believable and while from another era, their hopes, fears and challenges were easy to relate to. The author transports you to the 1940's with relevant detail and obviously impeccable research. The prejudices these women face entering a man's world are explored as well as other issues as relevant today as they were then like racisim, prejudice, bitterness and forgiveness.
A Woman's Place is a tribute to all women who sacrificed so much while their men were sacrificing their lives during the World War II era.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A captivating tale set during the perfectly researched American War-time era, March 25, 2009
A Woman's Place follows four women: Helen, Jean, Rosa and Ginnie --- all working Rosie-the-Riveter jobs in Northern Michigan during the Second World War. Each represents a different type likewise a different strength of woman: Rose is a fiery new wife of Italian origin who leaves Brooklyn to settle with her strict inlaws when her husband is shipped overseas; Helen is a middle-aged teacher and heir to a large fortune ---the only lasting member of a large family. Her past love life is explored and carries more than one surprise. If Rosa is the free-spirit, Helen is, at first glance, the stick-in-the-mud. Jean is a fresh-faced woman--- just 18 at the start of the novel, who yearns to go to college against the wishes of her All-American jock boyfriend. Her friendship with Earl the foreman at her ship-building factory job is the highlight of the novel; Ginnie is a stay-at-home mom whose war-time employment she hides from her keeping-up-with-the-Jones's huband. Ginnie yearns to discover that her value lay outside the conformity of a housewife ensconced in appearances of domestic norms. At one point, she is assured that the dog is the only member of the household who holds any affection for her.
The novel begins with a snapshot of the quartet in their respective pre-war lives nicely developing characters who will grow into dear friends as the pages progress. When the attack at Pearl Harbour hits, their lives are uprooted and the narrative continually rotates to each perspective of women-at-war.
The novel is at times funny, heartbreaking and warm. A scene where Rosa accidentaly spikes the punch bowl with vodka intoxicating her mother-in-law's church women's group had me in stitches.
The structure of the novel also works extremely well. More and more I learn that structure is one of many of Austin's strong suits.
Structure and the development of complex themes and issues. The first, in this novel, being racial prejudice. Though an inadvertent victim of prejudice herself, Helen is quick to judge a German POW begging for her acceptance.... driving the consequence of bigotry close to home.
Earl and his factory workers become victim to acts of racial persecution when they stand up for a black female engineer and Jean discovers that hatred is sometimes harboured not a stone's throw from your front porch.
Above all, Austin tackles the established role of women: at home, at work and through a Christian lens.
Austin empowers women while allowing them to thrive in a domestic role. Her housewife, Ginnie, is not "tame", her middle-aged teacher is not silent and submissive and Rosa and Jean are in turn intellectual, passionate and strong: women who carve their own path----for whom life as a wife and mother is a result of choice and not standard trajectory.
I especially felt that Austin did not favour one type of woman; nor champion one choice. Instead she realistically provided four examples and let her readers discover the universal spark in each... no matter profession, ideal, family sitatuation....
With this, I expect every reader will discover a bit of each of this well-drawn quarted is housed in themselves.
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