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Detroit, 1942. The Motor City has retooled for war, using its industrial muscle to become the “arsenal of democracy.” But for three women, the war at home is more than building tanks and bombers. It’s about standing for your beliefs. And following your heart…
Bess Horowitz is the daughter of Jewish immigrants who have brought her up to struggle for a better world. The evil the Nazis have done, especially to Jews, horrifies and enrages her. Unable to sit on the sidelines, as an American and as a Jew, she goes to war herself—by working in a defense plant. She never expects to find a man she likes so much, as working-class and progressive as she is, who’s all wrong for her—because he isn’t Jewish.
Azulee Smith, recently divorced, is desperate to support her two young children. But she’s a Black woman in Detroit, and she scrambles to find work. She takes the best job she can get—as a dishwasher on a killing swing shift. She’s been singing in church all her life, but racism and exhaustion grind her down. Despair silences her voice—until she meets a handsome, footloose bluesman who wants to accompany her.
Viola Allen fled the South for a better life. But in Detroit, rife with racial conflict, she can’t put her memories of racial violence to rest. When her husband Otis enlists in the army, they send him down South for basic training to Camp Claiborne in Louisiana, where Black soldiers are treated as second-class citizens. Every letter from him makes Viola angrier—and reminds her of the Southern memories that still haunt her. She’d like to fight, too—if she can vanquish the ghosts of her past.
Genre: Historical
Bess Horowitz is the daughter of Jewish immigrants who have brought her up to struggle for a better world. The evil the Nazis have done, especially to Jews, horrifies and enrages her. Unable to sit on the sidelines, as an American and as a Jew, she goes to war herself—by working in a defense plant. She never expects to find a man she likes so much, as working-class and progressive as she is, who’s all wrong for her—because he isn’t Jewish.
Azulee Smith, recently divorced, is desperate to support her two young children. But she’s a Black woman in Detroit, and she scrambles to find work. She takes the best job she can get—as a dishwasher on a killing swing shift. She’s been singing in church all her life, but racism and exhaustion grind her down. Despair silences her voice—until she meets a handsome, footloose bluesman who wants to accompany her.
Viola Allen fled the South for a better life. But in Detroit, rife with racial conflict, she can’t put her memories of racial violence to rest. When her husband Otis enlists in the army, they send him down South for basic training to Camp Claiborne in Louisiana, where Black soldiers are treated as second-class citizens. Every letter from him makes Viola angrier—and reminds her of the Southern memories that still haunt her. She’d like to fight, too—if she can vanquish the ghosts of her past.
Genre: Historical
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Used availability for Sabra Waldfogel's Motor City at War