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Alliances
"The horrors and circumstances during World War II are depicted in this remarkable tale of fear and courage. The story takes you from England to France with a female American war correspondent trying to send the Americans the real story behind the war, and the English people trying to stay alive with all of the hardships of bombings and killings. The reader will be hard-pressed to read this without feeling it's more fact than fiction, more fear than sentimentality. This is for both men and women, but not a romance in any sense of the word. Action - yes; Conflict - plenty; Well-written - absolutely." - Rendezvous Magazine review of the Worldwide Library edition of ALLIANCES published in March 1987.
388 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
3 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Quinn
8 books12 followersI write as Elizabeth Quinn, but my name is Beth Quinn Barnard. I've made my living writing news and novels, and teaching journalism, fiction, and composition since 1976. A graduate of Skidmore College and Boston University, I've lived in Grants Pass, Oregon, since 1983 with my husband, Jeff Barnard, a reporter with the Associated Press. Our children, Nate and Nellie, are grown,but we made sure they were Red Sox fans before we set them free. I like to read, travel, hike, cook, ski and raft. I sing alto in a local community chorus and am having a blast remodeling our home room-by-room.
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June 16, 2017
Read for the 2017 June TBR Challenge: Favorite Trope or Theme
Posting this one early since I've finished my selection for the month.
I didn’t go with a trope per se this month, but since I sometimes find myself in the mood for good war fiction--especially in honor of Memorial Day--I went with a war theme. I often find themes of survival or enduring through extreme conditions or hardships very compelling, which is part of the appeal of war fiction. There’s so much potential for character growth, and characters are often caught up in events greater than themselves and come out very changed by their experiences.
Sometimes I discover books in unexpected places. I love to peruse the advertisements in older books, and I discovered this book advertised in a romance from the 1980s and was surprised when I found it available as an ebook on Amazon. Although this book includes love affairs, that’s not the focus. It’s straight up historical and focused on the war through three main points of view: Nora Seymour, Matt Chase and Constance Tolliver.
Nora is an ambitious American war correspondent, making inroads in what was largely a male profession at that time. She becomes involved with Matt, who is an army corporal working at SHAEF until he can be reassigned to his battalion. Matt’s father is a congressman and moralist who opposes war, which contributes to Matt’s troubled feelings about the taste he’s developed for battle. Matt likes Nora’s moxy but after a few dates begins to question her involvement with him. He makes it clear that he doesn’t want to be used as a source for any of her stories. Nora tries to compartmentalize her relationship from her reporting, but that becomes difficult when she obtains information from other sources that could have easily come from Matt. As her boss confesses, sometimes people don’t understand that reporting isn’t just a job. It’s who we are.
Constance Tolliver is an aristocratic English woman and columnist for a British magazine. She became famous for writing an idealistic book called Judgment after her twin brother was killed in World War I, but since then a heavy dose of realism has chipped away at her ideals. She recognizes social causes and inequities all around her, but doesn’t know if she can help or how to make a difference. When the war broke out, she and her husband sent their children to stay with relatives in the States and her husband later took a civil servant position in India leaving her behind in England.
Other important characters are Nora’s boss, Will Davies, who goes in with the troops during D-Day; Tim Chase, Matt’s younger brother who flies bombers; and Peter Ryan, an American surgeon who becomes romantically involved with Constance despite their class differences. Peter grew up in Hell’s Kitchen and still feels a lot of resentment toward the upper classes.
Overall, this was a really good story of the war experience with so many little details adroitly and naturally woven in. The first half of the novel is set in England and really captures the mood as Londoners persevere bombings and other hardships, and the Allies converge and gear up for the invasion. The invasion itself and push toward Germany take up the last 40 percent of the novel. I was biting my nails toward the end anxious to find out who would survive. I highly recommend it to those who love WWII fiction. It’s definitely a keeper on my virtual bookshelf and deserves to be rescued from obscurity.
Posting this one early since I've finished my selection for the month.
I didn’t go with a trope per se this month, but since I sometimes find myself in the mood for good war fiction--especially in honor of Memorial Day--I went with a war theme. I often find themes of survival or enduring through extreme conditions or hardships very compelling, which is part of the appeal of war fiction. There’s so much potential for character growth, and characters are often caught up in events greater than themselves and come out very changed by their experiences.
Sometimes I discover books in unexpected places. I love to peruse the advertisements in older books, and I discovered this book advertised in a romance from the 1980s and was surprised when I found it available as an ebook on Amazon. Although this book includes love affairs, that’s not the focus. It’s straight up historical and focused on the war through three main points of view: Nora Seymour, Matt Chase and Constance Tolliver.
Nora is an ambitious American war correspondent, making inroads in what was largely a male profession at that time. She becomes involved with Matt, who is an army corporal working at SHAEF until he can be reassigned to his battalion. Matt’s father is a congressman and moralist who opposes war, which contributes to Matt’s troubled feelings about the taste he’s developed for battle. Matt likes Nora’s moxy but after a few dates begins to question her involvement with him. He makes it clear that he doesn’t want to be used as a source for any of her stories. Nora tries to compartmentalize her relationship from her reporting, but that becomes difficult when she obtains information from other sources that could have easily come from Matt. As her boss confesses, sometimes people don’t understand that reporting isn’t just a job. It’s who we are.
Constance Tolliver is an aristocratic English woman and columnist for a British magazine. She became famous for writing an idealistic book called Judgment after her twin brother was killed in World War I, but since then a heavy dose of realism has chipped away at her ideals. She recognizes social causes and inequities all around her, but doesn’t know if she can help or how to make a difference. When the war broke out, she and her husband sent their children to stay with relatives in the States and her husband later took a civil servant position in India leaving her behind in England.
Other important characters are Nora’s boss, Will Davies, who goes in with the troops during D-Day; Tim Chase, Matt’s younger brother who flies bombers; and Peter Ryan, an American surgeon who becomes romantically involved with Constance despite their class differences. Peter grew up in Hell’s Kitchen and still feels a lot of resentment toward the upper classes.
Overall, this was a really good story of the war experience with so many little details adroitly and naturally woven in. The first half of the novel is set in England and really captures the mood as Londoners persevere bombings and other hardships, and the Allies converge and gear up for the invasion. The invasion itself and push toward Germany take up the last 40 percent of the novel. I was biting my nails toward the end anxious to find out who would survive. I highly recommend it to those who love WWII fiction. It’s definitely a keeper on my virtual bookshelf and deserves to be rescued from obscurity.
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