True confession of a reader of non-fiction - I decided to read The Beantown Girls as a source to find other works on the subject of this book. I am discovering that many works of historical fiction are well documented and researched, and, open doors into non-fiction. I was not disappointed in this book as author Jane Healey put together an entertaining work on this chapter of our country's World War II history.
So what is The Beantown Girls about? It is about the exploits of Red Cross Clubmobile Girls and how they served our nation during the war. Probably more familiar to some by the less-than-respectful name of "Donut Dollies" these women drove large buses and service vans to bring coffee, donuts, candy and a piece of "back home" to our troops serving overseas.
Main character Fiona, and her friends Viviana and Dottie (all from Boston, thus the title) join up to become Clubmobile Girls. Fiona hopes that opening this chapter of her life will help her find out what happened to her fiance who was shot down on a bombing mission over Europe. She talks her two friends into joining her.
The book follows these women through training and eventually into Europe in 1944 and 45. Healey uses experiences of actual Clubmobile Girls to flesh out the experiences of our main characters. What happens to them actually happened to women working for the Red Cross in Europe during the war. This is a very much unknown part of our history. Unless you had a Clubmobile Girl in the family you may have never heard of them.
Healey writes with great humor and emotion in The Beantown Girls, and I think you find it very engaging. Written from the Fiona's viewpoint, the story has many characters the weave in and out of the action and keeps you turning pages until the end.
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