All Good Women

by Valerie Miner

As World War II rages abroad, a group of women forge the bonds of sisterhood in America

In 1938, while tensions in Europe are reaching a boiling point, four young women with big ambitions enter secretarial school in San Francisco. Motivated to attain the financial stability that eluded their parents, they go to battle for their futures. Moira, of Scottish descent, dreams of being an actress. Ann yearns for the education her Jewish immigrant parents provided for her brother, but not for her. Japanese American Wanda experiences firsthand the racial injustices running rampant in the United States. And Teddy, who left the Dust Bowl for sunny California, comes to startling realizations about herself as the war progresses. These women will be both buoyed and challenged by their dreams, experiencing love, loss, and everything in between. Against the backdrop of a nation gripped by fear and paranoia, Miner eloquently captures the spirit of wartime on the home front.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, World War II, Lesbian Fiction, Historical, War, LGBT

577 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Valerie Miner is the award-winning author of fifteen books. Her new story collection, Bread and Salt, will be published in September, 2020. Her latest novel, Traveling with Spirits, will be published in September, 2013. Other novels include After Eden, Range of Light, A Walking Fire, Winter's Edge, Blood Sisters, All Good Women, Movement: A Novel in Stories, and Murder in the English Department. Her short fiction books include Abundant Light, The Night Singers and Trespassing. Her collection of essays is Rumors from the Cauldron: Selected Essays, Reviews and Reportage. In 2002, The Low Road: A Scottish Family Memoir was a Finalist for the PEN USA Creative Non-Fiction Award. Abundant Light was a 2005 Fiction Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards.
Valerie Miner’s work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Triquarterly, Salmagundi, New Letters, Ploughshares, The Village Voice, Prairie Schooner, The Gettysburg Review, The T.L.S., The Women’s Review of Books, The Nation and other journals. Her stories and essays are published in more than sixty anthologies. A number of her pieces have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4. Her work has been translated into German, Turkish, Danish, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish and Dutch. In addition to single-authored projects, she has collaborated on books, museum exhibits as well as theatre.
She has won fellowships and awards from The Rockefeller Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The NEA, The Jerome Foundation, The Heinz Foundation, The Australia Council Literary Arts Board and numerous other sources. She has received Fulbright Fellowships to Tunisia, India and Indonesia.
Winner of a Distinguished Teaching Award, she has taught for over twenty-five years and is now a professor and artist in residence at Stanford University. She travels internationally giving readings, lectures, and workshops. She and her partner live in San Francisco and Mendocino County, California. Her website is www.valerieminer.com

Reviews

[Angela M · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes that I would really like this book . I'm a fan of historical fiction and I was drawn to this story that tells of the friendship of four young women in San Francisco before , during and after WW II .
It was moving at first when Ann, Moira and Teddy go to the bus that is carrying off their Japanese American friend Wanda to an internment camp . After that , I didn't really feel a connection between these women .

What the author does do well is depict what is happening in the country while the war is going on. However, I'm just too spoiled by the other beautiful , well written ,and poignant stories of the war to give this more than 3 stars .

Thanks to Open Road Integrated Media and NetGalley .

[Mary Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful novel. As my friends know, I am a total sucker for good WWII stories, and I got this for practically nothing from either Early Bird or BookBub. (I highly recommend both sites.}
Four very young women meet at a secretarial school in San Francisco in the late '30s and share a rental house before war breaks out. They are all American-born but also the daughters of immigrants: a Jewish girl, a Japanese girl, a Catholic-Scottish girl, and an "Okie" girl all of whose parents found their way to California. The stories of their relationships and experiences during the war years are as full of tragedy, loss, heartbreak, and survival as those of the G.I.s and sailors who served in the military, stories not often told enough. Soldiers were not the only victims of PTSD. As are many good stories, this is a coming-of-age one as these girls, now women, emerge from the war years wounded, yet hopeful, and are faced with decisions about their futures. Those of us who were born after WWII can learn much about the so-called Home Front experienced by our parents and grandparents.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Overall, I'd probably give it 3.5 stars, but found it worthwhile to round up!

This review also appeared on my blog.


Miner’s novel tells the story of four very different young women who become friends right as trouble is brewing in Europe prior to World War II. Spanning twelve years, All Good Women details the friendships and lives of these women from 1938 to 1950. They meet in secretarial school, each with their own ambitions and dreams. They end up moving in together to a house on Stockton Street in San Francisco with big plans for life. Moira, a young woman of Scottish descent, dreams of becoming an actress. Ann, from a Jewish family, wants to continue her education. Japanese-American Wanda wants nothing more than to become a journalist, exposing the problems of the world around them. And Teddy isn’t sure what she wants aside from trying to keep things staying the same with all her friends at the house.

The problem is, with the war brewing, things can’t stay the same. Each girl is affected differently, but none escape the hardships that come from the war even though they aren’t the ones fighting the battles. Wanda and her family are sent to an internment camp along with the other Japanese-American families from the coast. Ann decides to go to London to help with the refugee Jewish children who have been torn from their families, unsure of their parents’ fate. Moira begins working in a factory to help with the war effort and struggles with her desires in life. Teddy tries to keep everything together with her family and friends while at the same time coming to terms with her homosexuality.

This book was a little slow to start for me, and at the beginning there were a few time jumps that I didn’t expect. Eventually, as I grew to know the characters and as the story moved on a linear timeline, I enjoyed the experience of reading All Good Women more and more. Although, on second thought, I’m not entirely sure I’d choose the word ‘enjoyed’ to describe my time with the book. This book seems to be a pretty realistic portrayal of the lives of some women living at this time. It is evident that Miner put in a great deal of research to write this book. Because of this realistic approach, the book isn’t much of an ‘upper’ if you know what I mean. World War II was a tragic time in our nation’s history and Miner does a wonderful job portraying its affects on individual families and friendships. I think one of my favorite things that Miner did in All Good Women is in writing about a difficulty or hardship of one of the girls, it isn’t’t always told through the eyes of that character. This created an interesting dynamic in understanding the friendships and personalities of the individual characters.

All Good Women isn’t a perfect book. At times, I found myself actually questioning if these four girls would be friends in real life or if Miner just created a situation where she could easily write about four very different people in one time period. As I was thinking this to myself towards the end of the book, one of the characters (Ann) actually has the very same thought, and she answers my question. “She occasionally wondered why they had stayed so close despite their different directions. But the answer to that question was why they had become friends in the first place: something in each of them transcended parents and religion and ethnicity and marriage and children – a common independence and a shared sense of potential” (page 424-425). Alright, you got me.

If I had to pick a word that would describe how I felt after reading All Good Women, it would be melancholy. Like I said before, I’m not sure I’d pick the word ‘enjoy’ to describe my reading of the novel. With that being said, I don’t mean for you to be turned off of the book by the word melancholy. All Good Women is definitely worth reading for its different take on World War II historical fiction. I’ve read many a book from this time period, but I don’t think any of them were quite like Miner’s novel. You should just know going into the book that nothing is sugarcoated. It also doesn’t leave you feeling overwhelmingly happy. This is actually a feeling that I kind of like though, this melancholy. Not that this book ended in tragedy, but I appreciate when an author doesn’t baby their reader by writing a book full of hardship that ends with a magical happy ending ending.

So those are my thoughts on Valerie Miner’s All Good Women. It’s definitely worth your time if you’re looking for a different take on this time period in history. It’s also a great study of women and their friendships.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the premise, but not really the execution. Characters were a bit one-dimensional for me, and several plot points seemed awfully far-fetched. Teddy's in particular was interesting, but felt forced.

Also, it seemed like the editing fell away about halfway through. I noticed lots of issues with grammar, punctuation, and style that weren't there in the beginning. It's like someone started a copyediting pass and didn't finish it, but the book was published anyway. Weird.

[Mystica · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Nicole Overmoyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.)

[Zoe Jussel]

Quite liked this chronicle of three women's lives around WWII in the States and how they all, in different ways, spent war time. Made me think more about the internment camps and how egregious it was to ruin so many good lives.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

The action in this novel takes place over a 12-year period, following four young women who meet in typing class and move in together in a house in San Francisco, right at the beginning of WWII. The book is well researched, following one woman as she and her family are sent to the Japanese camps in the Arizona desert, and another woman as she goes to London to help with the Jewish children sent to England to escape the Gestapo and the concentration camps. and the two women who stay in the house.

I particularly liked two quotes (on page 58 of my copy), where one woman says during a discussion of the war, "Who in hell knows what is going on? Can you understand the reports from Germany? Seems to me there's a lot of censorship for a war America isn't fighting," and, "Wars are always designed by men and the results are mended by women."

Despite various typos and strange sentence constructions here and there that had me crying out for a good copyeditor, the book kept my attention throughout.

[Marla · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel reminded me of reading cultural anthropology texts in college, lo those many years ago! The author includes pretty much every plot point and thought each of the four main characters has, which can be interesting and tedious at the same time.
What makes it a good read is the historical context: the buildup to WWII and then its immediate aftermath. The story follows four young women who meet at typing school in 1938 San Francisco and become housemates. The author takes great pains to describe their various ethnicities and the discrimination they experience. The dialogue is pleasantly realistic for the period, though there is a fair amount of stereotyping which may have been true to the time. A surprise bonus was the inclusion of lesbian characters.

I love the title of this book -- that alone made me buy it!
Even before I knew anything about what it was about. Also the cover. The woman in the chair looks like Jennifer Lawrence.

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

(I read this book twice during the summer of 1991, then reluctantly returned it to the library...A few years later I reread it, then two years ago I did so again. I never was able to find my own copy and the library edition was withdrawn due to poor condition.)

Miner creates such warm and vivid characters that you can't help but commit yourself 100% to this tale about how four women are changed forever during World War II.

[. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the book to be quite depressing. The characters struggle with personal conflicts throughout the war in ways that profoundly change them, forever altering their friendships. The realism of the story impressed me, but it also left me feeling quite disheartened. That being said, I think it's definitely worth a read.

[Angie Kritenbrink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love, love, love this book. Full review on my blog, here.