Customer Reviews

A Woman's Place: A Novel

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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.

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.

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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Three-time Christy Award winner Lynn Austin pens an engaging novel about four diverse women who become friends while working at a ship-building factory during World War II in the fictional town of Stockton, Michigan. The seemingly simple plot of relationships between women is shot through with the meaty themes of forgiveness, discovering identity, prejudice, gender roles and faith. Each of the four will fight their own battle to change their past and invent a future for themselves.

Virginia "Ginny" Mitchell is a sweet little housewife who has been dominated by her husband Harold for years. She is insecure about her marriage. Is Harold having an affair? When she impulsively joins the WWII workforce, Ginny begins discovering her identity as a woman who is competent and can contribute in more ways than just as mother and wife. In an evangelical Christian story such as this one, Austin successfully walks a fine line between showing the importance of stay-at-home moms and the significant contributions made by working mothers.

Rosa Voorhees is a sultry, gorgeous Italian from New York City who hits the bottle while trying to get along with her churchgoing Dutch in-laws she lives with in Stockton. She is desperately in love with her new husband, Dirk, who is in the military. "Rosa had found what she'd longed for all her life, and she was terrified she would lose it." She strives to overcome a difficult past, create a different future for herself, and overcome obstacles to earn her high school diploma.

Helen is a lonely 50-ish single teacher who fears love and relationships. Her six brothers and sisters all died young, and years ago she was the victim of an unhappy love affair (whose specifics unfold in a surprising plot twist). "If her siblings' brief lives had taught her anything, it was that life was short, happiness fleeting." Helen has lost her faith and fears relationships, but her friendship with the three other women chips away at her cold persona. When the opportunity to teach opens up, she must choose between mentoring her new friends and a secure job. When tragedy strikes the four friends, she regrets ever loving anyone again. Will her heart change?

Jean is caught between her attraction for two men: one movie-star handsome and a long-time love, and another with a good heart but crippled by polio. As she wrestles with a decision of who will win her heart, she fights stereotypes about college and suitable career choices for women.

When a POW camp is set up in Stockton to house German prisoners, readers will find it interesting that Helen is vehemently opposed and prejudiced. Yet she fought her father's disapproval to teach young black students and children of migrant workers. The reason for her violent dislike of the Germans unfolds as the book nears its end.

Austin is a talented writer (CANDLE IN THE DARKNESS, FIRE BY NIGHT, HIDDEN PLACES), and some of her scenes particularly shine. A women's church meeting where the punch is inadvertently spiked provides some hilarious moments (reminiscent of the Andy Griffith episode where Aunt Bee and her friends take too much "tonic.") Seeing the war briefly through Ginny's two young sons' eyes also provides some poignant moments. The African-American character of Thelma King gives Austin a chance to flesh out some of the issues of racial injustice of the time period.

There is some repetition (we hear at least three times where Jean's brothers are stationed). Ginny's use of italicized new vocabulary words is engaging at first, but becomes a bit irritating halfway through the novel. Other than these few quibbles, readers will find A WOMAN'S PLACE a lovely window into the WWII time period, and a nice book club read with its conversation starters about racism, gender roles, overcoming a difficult past, and forgiveness.

--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby

I found A Woman's Place to be a great window into the WWII era and how it affected the lives of several women. Though not her best novel, I throughly enjoyed it...enough to stay up till 3am finishing the book!

The book first starts out telling the story of each woman (Rosa, Jean, Virginia, and Helen). Their stories cross paths later on as they meet each other at the factory they work at. The book describes the impact that working at the factory brings to each of them. Virginia longs to be more then a housewife but is afraid to tell her husband she works there. Helen wants to escape the loneliness her silent house brings. Rosa has recently moved in with her strict in-laws and wants to escape their rules. Finally Jean just wants to prove that she can still be a woman and do a "man's job." Each character grows throughout the novel in many ways.

I really like how Lynn Austin did her research and fully described the 1940's in her writing. It really brought the era to life and I could picture it fully in my mind. I look forward to her next book out in September titled "A Proper Pursuit."

A Woman's Place is one of my favorite Lynn Austin books. I was immediately captivated by the story and characters.

As the men went off to fight in WWII, the government recruited women to work for the war effort. This is the story of four very different women who answered the call.

Virginia was a traditional housewife with two boys in the house, who had become worried that her husband might be having an affair. She felt her life consisted of nothing but tedious, repetitive tasks, and that her husband took her for granted because she was too boring for him. The answer was to take a job at a shipbuilding factory.

Rosa was a highstrung Italian girl from the Bronx who had fallen in love with a young man getting ready to ship out to sea. She barely knew him, but they married. He arranged for her to move to a quiet town in Michigan to live with his ultra-strict and religious parents. Rosa took the job to escape from the regimentation of her in-laws.

Helen was a wealthy, retired teacher who had spent her recent years caring for her invalid parents. Disappointments in her life had turned her into an anti-social, bitter person. When her parents died, she was suddenly completely isolated and took the job to find some meaning in her lonely life.

Jean was a vibrant, venturesome young lady who dreamed of going to college and having a career. Her boyfriend took advantage of a farmer's exemption from the draft, and was pushing her to marry him and settle into a traditional lifestyle. Jean had gone to work at the shipbuilding factory several months before the others, and she was already the lead electrician. She was assigned to train the crew of women.

The book is written from the viewpoint of each woman in alternating chapters. This worked very well, letting me get to know and understand each woman as the plot unfolded. Each of them faced trials and challenges, including disapproval of women working in men's jobs, racial prejudice, violence in the workplace, turmoil in the lovelife, and dealing with their own personal issues. The book has multiple messages about faith, love, forgiveness and friendship. The ending was satisfying. Overall, I found this to be a wonderful novel--I'm so glad I read it!

I loved reading "A Womans Place" by Lynn Austin. This is the first book that I read by Lynn Austin and I could not put it down. I loved the backdrop of the American homefront during WWII and how women proudly worked to help win the war. She tells a great story of how 4 women from different backgrounds became good friends in the workplace. I hated to put the book down!

It is always a pleasure to hold in one's hands a book that is hard to put down. This is such a book. The unique characters of these four women are so delicately and intelligently grafted together into a binding friendship that the reader feels drawn into the relationships one by one. Some surprises, some twists, all of it compelling! It was also rather nostalgic for me as my mother was a WWII wife and mother; this was her time, and it gave me some insight into what life had been like for her in the 40's.

Really enjoyed this book. It kept me interested til the very end. I am very picky about books that I read because if it doesn't catch me in the first chapter I never continue reading it. My time is too valuable for just hum drum stories. This book was purchased as a novel for the Christian women's book club I'm in. It was a good one without being too sappy. Sets the scene for a good conversation about each character. I felt connected to each of them quickly.

An eye opener to homefront life during WWII. Seen through the lives of four different women who form lasting friendships through their jobs at a factory.