The Beantown Girls

By Jane Healey,

Book cover of The Beantown Girls

Book description

An Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestseller.

A novel of love, courage, and danger unfolds as World War II's brightest heroines-the best of friends-take on the front lines.

1944: Fiona Denning has her entire future planned out. She'll work in city hall, marry her fiance when he returns from the…

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Why read it?

3 authors picked The Beantown Girls as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Good friends stick together through thick and thin. That’s the premise I took away from The Beantown Girls. 

When one of three forever best friends from Boston learns that her fiancé is missing in WWII action, she determines to go to Europe and against all odds, find him. She convinces her two best friends—women with very different personalities, very different gifts, and skills—to join her as Red Cross Clubmobile girls in what could be a grand adventure or a terrible risk to their lives. 

They never expected to care so deeply for the soldiers they go to help, to encounter…

I’ve read this book twice in the last year. Even though I knew what happened, it was a page-turner the second time through. Healey clearly did extensive research to give her characters such authentic things to say and feel–they became very real to me. This book doesn’t hide the realities of war. The descriptions of the hard work Red Cross Clubmobile girls did near battlefronts are spot on and the camaraderie between the trio of main characters is beautifully written. Make sure you have a box of tissues handy! 

From Karen's list on women in uniform in World War II.

I love historical fiction that teaches us about little-known chapters in history—especially stories of unsung women in wartime. Beantown Girls delivers all that along with love, laughter, friendship, and tears. It’s the fascinating tale of the women who brought aid and comfort to Allied soldiers in World War Two with the Red Cross Clubmobiles.

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