An account of the women artists and activists whose determination to live--and to create--with courage and conviction took them as far as the Spanish Civil War.
Fascinating and comprehensive ... Watling’s protagonists are flawed but brave, battling fascism with guts and determination – even if, inevitably, they kept an eye on which of their gruelling experiences would make the best copy.
Watling’s narrative, inserting vivid glimpses of the conflict to situate her shuffling of a deck of characters who themselves embodied complex and evolving ideas, is expertly balanced ... Rather than arbitrate such intractable questions, Watling lays them out, reflectively and empathetically, via her characters.
Watling recounts the progress of the brutal war and the women’s growing conviction that inaction was not an option. Unfortunately, her decision to refer to these women—and less consistently to the men they were involved with—by their first names gives her serious, thoughtful narrative a gossipy tone.
