The Wartime Sisters by Lynda Cohen Loigman
Published by St. Martin’s Press on January 22, 2019
Genres: Historical, Literature & Fiction
Pages: 304
Format: ARC, eBook
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Two estranged sisters, raised in Brooklyn and each burdened with her own shocking secret, are reunited at the Springfield Armory in the early days of WWII. While one sister lives in relative ease on the bucolic Armory campus as an officer’s wife, the other arrives as a war widow and takes a position in the Armory factories as a “soldier of production.” Resentment festers between the two, and secrets are shattered when a mysterious figure from the past reemerges in their lives.
I kept hearing about this book, The Wartime Sisters by Lynda Cohen Loigman, on social media and other book sites I often visit. I headed over to NetGalley and saw it available for review. Shortly afterward, I was contacted by St. Martin’s Press and I already knew I wanted to read the book!
I generally don’t read a lot of historical fiction and I seriously don’t read “war stories”, but since I kept seeing this book out there, I knew I needed to give it a try. I have to say this: it’s interesting to say that there was obviously a war being fought while this story was moving forward and said war is often referred to, but basically it’s in the “peripherals” of the story.
The Wartime Sisters is told through multiple and alternating narratives. Readers travel back and forth between two times frames and two places, but the main focus of the story is on two sisters growing up in Brooklyn from 1919 to 1932. The other time frame is told ten years later to the present at an armory during the war in Springfield, MA. Interestingly, there are no battle scenes or European settings, even though WWII is clearly underway in this story.
The real “war” of this story is the one being fought between sisters, Millie and Ruth, who have always had an abhorrent relationship. Ruth and Millie couldn’t be any more different. We see the ebb and flow of Millie and Ruth’s relationship – Ruth is smart, steady and responsible, but unfortunately, she wasn’t blessed with younger sister, Millie. This difference in their looks forms the basis of a rift between them that keeps them apart for years. The bonds of their sisterhood are tested again and again.
While Ruth and Millie have been estranged for years, Millie’s situation causes her and her two year old son to come to Springfield to live with Ruth and her husband, and their twin daughters at the armory where her husband is an officer.
Readers watch the two sisters, now women, as they grow and change. As they become stronger within themselves, they begin to come together in a very different way from the past. I don’t want to say too much about the plot or write a spoiler, but there are a number of buried secrets that are revealed as the story progresses. The story had me fully engaged and the characters’ personalities had me totally dialed in, cover to cover.
Lynda Cohen Loigman grew up in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. She received a B.A. in English and American Literature from Harvard College and a law degree from Columbia Law School. Lynda practiced trusts and estates law in New York City for eight years before moving out of the city to raise her two children with her husband.
She wrote The Two-Family House while she was a student of the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. The Two-Family House was chosen by Goodreads as a best book of the month for March, 2016, and was a nominee for the Goodreads 2016 Choice Awards in Historical Fiction. Lynda’s second novel, The Wartime Sisters, will be published on January 22, 2019.
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Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing me with a digital copy of this book through NetGalley for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.
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