ALL GOOD WOMEN is the sweeping story of the experiences of four women in America during World War II. Written by Valerie Miner, it centers on a quartet of women who meet in typing school shortly before America enters the war.

Teddy Fielding, Moira Finlayson, Ann Rose, and Wanda Nakatani come from hugely different backgrounds and the war affects them in hugely different ways. Teddy is a Dust Bowl transplant struggling with her mostly hidden homosexuality. Moira is a Catholic girl who dreams of being in the movies and ends up pregnant before she’s married. Ann is Jewish and her parents were German immigrants who left as much of their heritage behind as they could. Wanda is American-born Japanese and ends up in the detention camps that were erected after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Alternating equally between the women, good friends put under a microscope to see how the war impacted their lives, the story is equally interesting on four different levels. It’s easy to see how much research Miner put into the story and how important the topic was to her.

That being said, the novel has a few faults. It’s too descriptive. Hardly anything is left to the reader’s imagination and it’s easy to find yourself skimming page-long paragraphs about the decision to make tea or plant cucumbers in order to find some dialogue and action.

In the end, it’s a truly unique look at a part of American history that has been written about in all forms countless times.

(I received a copy of ALL GOOD WOMEN through NetGalley in exchange for an honest, original review. The review will be cross-posted on NetGalley, Goodreads, and my blog.)

Four young women - all from varying cultural and ethnic backgrounds come together to start training at a secretarial school. Secretary is not their first choice of job but they think that this would be a stepping stone to whatever their dream job is. Whether it be the movies or journalism or teaching. Living together just four girls, is a taste of independence and not something that went down well with the families of the girls. For some of the girls it was an escape from the cloying effect of huge families, extended families, constant needling and just in some cases to get away.

It is 1938 and the whole world is on the brink of change. These four young women also know that life is going to change but they did not realize how radical the changes would be. In Wanda's case being of Oriental descent, despite having been born in America it became a nightmare. Classified as an alien, and a probably enemy of the American people, she and thousands of those of Japanese descent were overnight taken from their homes and put into barren camps where the treatment meted out to them was horrendous. It seems terrible that no journalist thought of highlighting the unfair treatment meted out to them for no fault of theirs, other than their race of origin.

With Wanda's internment in the camp the girls grow up almost overnight each one thinking very clearly for themselves as to what they should or should not do. For Teddy a personal awareness of her sexuality and that the sooner it is acknowledged the better though how she is going to do this she does not know.

A coming of age of four young women - a delightful read with the background of WWII looming in the background and how it affected Americans so far away from the actual theatre of war.