Pages: 369
Format: eARC
Buy the Book: Amazon
Goodreads: In the fall of 1939, while Europe grapples with the outbreak of war, Mimi Lukas wages a private battle in her Chicago neighborhood. Her husband, Stan, once a promising White Sox player, has been sidelined by a broken leg. His hopes of returning to baseball are dwindling along with their savings. As Stan sinks into inertia, Mimi resolves to go back to nursing.
When a friend tells her of a women's clinic in need of a nurse, Mimi hesitates. Such places are illegal and at odds with her religious upbringing. But Dr. Gabler’s office isn't the dingy establishment Mimi envisioned. The space is clean, bright, and welcoming, the staff skillful. Patients are treated with dignity and compassion, even as they are sworn to secrecy about what happens within its walls.
The patients, too, are not who Mimi expected. Some are heartbreakingly young. Most are married, and many already have children. Police and state prosecutors are paid handsomely to turn a blind eye. As Mimi finds kinship with her colleagues and with an officer on retainer, she begins her own private reckoning between what is legal and what is necessary, no matter how painful or inconvenient. But Mimi senses the tide turning against them. She knows, too, that soon she must decide how much she will risk to defend the ideals she's come to embrace through hard-won experience . . .
Kritters Thoughts: A historial fiction book set in the time of World War II, but only shows the effects of war and instead shares how Americans in Chicago are surviving - specifically women. Mimi Lukes had a pretty great life, her husband was a professional baseball player and her two kids were enjoying life in a Chicago neighborhood until an injury changes the course of their lives. Mimi knows that she can lean on her previous nursing skills and hopefully keep them from being homeless until her husband can get back on his feet.
I have read many many books set at this time, but most to all of them center around the war and in countries where the war was physically taking place. It was a breath of fresh air to read a book that was set during this time, but in a place where the war wasn't next door, but the effects of the war were still showing up. AND even more so the signs of the time were prevalent as women's freedoms were still limited. Mimi ends up in a clinic that focuses on women's health and primarily reproductive health and even in 2026 is still causing controversy. I will not get into a political debate, but will say that I loved reading about this time in our country and reading about how women were trying to help other women survive.
This was my third book of Amanda Skenandore's that I completed and I have three left to complete her back list and I have enjoyed each one - enough to add her to my historical fiction shelf in my personal library and collect her books in order to share them with others.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one copy of this book free of charge from Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.
