WINDSHIFT by Joyce Faulkner

Good morning, Blog Buds. 

I assume you all know about the WASPs during World War II, right?  Okay, just in case some of you don’t know, before World War II women were strongly discouraged if not outright denied the option of becoming a pilot.  Amelia Earhardt is probably the most famous of the women who rejected that and won.  The United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941 and all of a sudden the nation’s men were shipping off, leaving  few behind to work in the factories and other civilian jobs.  Women filled those spots.  Soon, the military couldn’t spare pilots to do the more mundane work of testing and ferrying new airplanes from factories to airfields.  Women pilot pioneers saw their chance and put together the Women’s Air Service Pilots, the WASPs.

Windshift is the name of the inn were a group of these WASPs stayed while working at an airfield in Ohio after completing their training.  Myrtle is the fortysomething widow who runs the inn.  And this is their story.

Shirley is a Daddy's Girl who can’t seem to understand why she doesn’t have many friends, but it becomes obvious by how she’s driven to remake her bed after Myrtle already made it and how critical she is of another new girl, Emmie, who dumps her stuff and flops on her own bed. 

Women are women the galaxy over, as Captain Kirk once noted, if I remember correctly.  And when they get together, it doesn’t matter if it’s 1943 or 2013.  The slang and the fashion changes and sometimes the social attitudes a little, but a group of females together is going to be entertaining at least.

That nitpick, Shirley, starts the story and she turns out to be a good one to describe the setting.  I totally loved Myrtle’s kitchen.  And not all the boys are off to war, one adorable, semi-deaf one drives the bus which takes them back and forth to work everyday.

Finally, Delores arrives and Shirley has someone to be jealous of.  Delores blows in dressed in blue silk and with two hot GIs carrying her stuff.  And Emmie hugs her because they’re already friends.

So, we got our three core heroines.

These girls come alive on the page.  You take a look at her grandma or great-grandma and try to imagine them at about age twenty.  Even if they show you pictures, I bet it’s hard to imagine them being and doing all the girly things you did or will do at that age.  But, they did.  And on top of all that normal girl stuff, these WASP girls also helped save the world.

Emmie’s backstory is sweet and sad.  She’s an orphan who falls in love and marries young and then her man is killed while testing out a new plane for her.  Gotta love Emmie.

Nowadays, it’s difficult to imagine the prejudice these three girls run into when people find out they’re pilots, but it bonds them together.  Back then, girls were supposed to stay home under their fathers’ control until they married, after which they were under their husband’s control.  They were supposed to make babies and wash dishes and that was it.  And some people couldn’t wrap their brain cells around the idea that they could or should help save the world besides. 

Then, Mags comes into the story.  She’s gonna be their mentor.  She’s older and she doesn’t give a damn about prejudice or any of that crap.  She’s built her own life and lives it on her own term.  And the girls love her for it.

Even when she takes them on a wild ride in a Plymouth, or maybe because of it.

It’s the first of many great and wonderful adventures with Mags.  I especially liked the one where she distracts a male officer so one of the girls can snitch his candy.  Sugar was rationed during World War II, so candy was a rare treat!

Mags was in Europe before this gig and she got to fly a Spitfire, my personal favorite aircraft of all time.  Speaking of Europe, Delores has family there being tormented by the Nazis there too.

This is the best kind of historical.  You get all the historical stuff delivered to you, but it doesn’t feel like it because the characters are so alive and real and easy to relate to, as well as believable in their era.  The secondary characters are fully fleshed out and you can sink right into the ‘world’ and forget it’s 2013.  That’s very hard to pull off, as a writer.

I hope Joyce Faulkner keeps writing Historicals and I hope her publisher keeps sending them to me to review!