Friday Reads: Next to Love

fridayreads:

This week’s #FridayReads giveaway is Ellen Feldman’s Next To Love -
Synopsis:
“When their men go off to war, Babe, Millie, and Grace, three childhood friends in Massachusetts,  live on letters, and in dread of telegrams that can bring …

fridayreads:

This week’s #FridayReads giveaway is Ellen Feldman’s Next To Love -

Synopsis:

When their men go off to war, Babe, Millie, and Grace, three childhood friends in Massachusetts,  live on letters, and in dread of telegrams that can bring only bad news.  But as the war drags on, and when  peace breaks out, they experience changes that move them in directions they never dreamed possible.  The women lose their innocence, struggle to raise their children, and find meaning and love in unexpected places.

And as they change, so does America—from a country in which people know their place in the social hierarchy to a world in which women’s rights, the Civil Rights movement, and technological innovations present new possibilities and uncertainties.

Yet Babe, Millie, and Grace remain bonded by their past, even as their children grow up and away and a new society rises from the ashes of the war.

A story of war, loss, and the scars they leave, Next To Love depicts the enduring power of love and friendship, and illuminates a transformational moment in American history.”


Praise:

“The ‘Greatest Generation’ and the battles to defeat Germany in Europe during WWII have received generous and much-deserved attention. Ellen Feldman turns our attention to the home front in a moving and insightful story of three young women in a small New England town, two of whom lose husbands on the Normandy beaches, and one whose returning husband is haunted by what we now know as PTSD. How they attempt to rebuild their lives is a story beautifully told. Feldman’s narrative also encompasses the racism and the anti-Semetism of those years as well as the nascent women’s movement without ever seeming didactic. A brilliant book!”
— Marian Nielsen, Orinda Books, Orinda, CA
Links:

The author’s website

I’m reading Indomitable Will, LBJ in the Presidency, by Mark Updegrove. All about LBJ from different perspectives of the people who knew him