One morning while passing through Grand Central Terminal on her way to work, Grace Healey finds an abandoned suitcase tucked beneath a bench. Unable to resist her own curiosity, Grace opens the suitcase, where she discovers a dozen photographs—each of a different woman.
Gripping ... Jenoff breathes life into the tale of a committed 'Band of Sisters' who displayed boundless courage in the face of historically dire circumstances, creating a compelling and exciting read.
Emotional profundity is sadly lacking in Jenoff’s latest ... a gauzier, more florid and awkwardly romantic account ... Jenoff has at her disposal a great, mostly untold story of heroism and espionage, both about the woman who trained an elite force of operatives and then spent years looking for them after their death, and also about what it was like to be one of those women, but the result has all of the tension of a Hallmark card. This is a slight re-telling of a remarkable story and an unusual slip-up from the dependable Jenoff.
The author, a lawyer and former diplomat, is clearly familiar with the thrill of the chase for the right piece of paper, the right research document, the challenges of circumventing red-tape. Genuine suspense is generated often, and unusually, in these papers by the seemingly mundane tasks of evading bureaucracy, and skimming through classified papers ... Readers interested in [themes like guilt, sacrifice, loyalty, betrayal and redemption], historical fiction set during this era, and interesting women as protagonists, will want to add this book to the shelf.
