Another Time and Place by Samantha Grosser
This novel is set in 1944 and 1945 and has two voices. One of them is Anna Pilgrim, a young Englishwoman, brought up by a disgruntled divorced mother in a poor household. She is now working in the office of a munitions factory, overseen by a man whose family used to live near hers. The second is Tom Blake, a young American bomber pilot from the western United States.
They meet in a café on Anna's day off and during Tom's leave. They connect in a way that neither of them expects and spend the next week together mostly in a hotel near Tom's base. When he goes on a mission and doesn't return, Anna returns home to her mother's anger, and goes back to work.
Her mother is pressuring her to marriage, to a man they know, but in whom Anna has no interest. Besides, she is waiting for Tom as they had already made plans to marry.
Tom, meanwhile, was injured when his plane went down and doesn't know what happened to the rest of his crew. As we see him worry about Anna and try to get messages to her but receives no response, he vacillates between hope and despair.
This is a romance story of immediate attraction, followed by unplanned separation, that tugs at the emotions. As we see each character and know that the other longs for them, we are drawn in to the worry that they may not reconnect despite their feelings. I found myself caught up in the story. Anna is a strong woman with an independent attitude, and who luckily has a close supportive friend. Her relationship with her mother is antagonistic and has never been a good one. The characters have depth and motivations that make sense. A good read.
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