Firing Lines: Three Canadian Women Write the First World War

by Debbie Marshall

The story and WWI reportage of Mary MacLeod Moore, Beatrice Nasmyth, and Elizabeth Montizambert. The three women reported from Britain and France during the First World War, for various Canadian publications. Their articles offer insightful, moving, funny, and compelling observations of a devastating conflict.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War I, Biography

314 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 18, 2017

About the author

Debbie Marshall is a writer, editor, and playwright. She is the author of Give Your Other Vote to the Sister: A Woman's Journey into the Great War, the story of Roberta MacAdams, a First World War nurse and politician. Her play Firing Lines is based on the Great War writings of foreign correspondent Beatrice Nasmyth, and was produced in conjunction with the Provincial Archives of Alberta in August 2012 at the Edmonton Fringe Festival.

Debbie also writes a monthly blog that features Canadian nurses who died during the First World War. To learn more, please visit rememberingfirstworldwarnurses.blogspot.ca.

Reviews

[Jane Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched and well written. A great example of a group biography, cleverly interweaving the personal lives of three different Canadian women writers, who witnessed the World War One first hand, and shaped Canadian opinion through their writing. Lots of detail, none of it dull, and a uniquely female perspective of the war.

[Michelle Ule · Rating 3 out of 5]

WWI is an area of interest for me, particularly with female journalists. Marshall has done some excellent research but her task was complicated in trying to follow and tell of the lives of three very different women spread across the theater.

They all were from Canada and exhibited spirited attempts to follow the story.

The book probably should have been organized a little differently. Beginning the story with all the family background and history bogged down the read considerably. Because I was reading the book on a Kindle, I had difficulty picturing the different women and telling them apart until 2/3 of the way through.

It's tricky to braid three stories and I appreciated Marshall's efforts.

[Lorna Driscoll · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed reading about the lives of these three women. Their wartime reporting gives a different perspective on historical events. I've read quite a bit about the two world wars and there were things in this book that I'd not been aware of before. Marshall's research was obviously extensive and this is a very readable biography of three amazing women.