The Paper Birds

Finished July 13

The Paper Birds by Jeannette Lynes

This historical novel follows Toronto high school graduate Gemma Sullivan from June 1943 through the end of World War II. Gemma was orphaned when her parents drowned in a swimming accident and she's had a fear of water ever since. She was raised by her Aunt Wren, a former milliner and now a seamstress. One of her teachers has recommended her for a job doing code breaking and with her signature on the Official Secrets Act, she can't tell her aunt, or anyone else what she actually does, so she just says office work.

Aunt Wren is still grieving the loss of her fiancé in World War I and her declining eyesight has led her to stop working in millinery and put them into precarious financial circumstances, so Gemma's income is very important for them. They also decide to take in a lodger, Rooney Delacroix, a young woman from Gravenhurst who has a job working at a tannery in the city. Rooney is a pleasant girl, but has her own secrets. 

Beatrice Fearing, Gemma's supervisor, worked as a math professor before working on code breaking and there are three other young women that work in the same small cottage near the lake. Cora-Lynn Ponder, a university math student had taken classes from Miss Fearing. Hester Hobbs is good with logical problems, and Ada Swift also works at another site where she secrets a variety of devices in objects. She's a good analyst. 

Wren is glad to use some of Gemma's pay to go to an eye doctor and get new glasses, and along with improved eyesight, she begins to look forward in her life with more optimism. 

One lunch hour, when Gemma takes a walk, she encounters a hungry cat and a young man behind a fence of a POW camp. She develops feelings for both, and must decide whether to trust her instincts. 

The war work is interesting and I enjoyed the personalities of the different women in the novel. Some of the coincidences in connections were a stretch, but it was still an enjoyable read. 

A Desperate Fortune

Finished December 15

A Desperate Fortune by Susanna Kearsley

This is a novel that I'd been meaning to read for a while since I'd read a later book featuring some of the same characters and really enjoyed it. This is a dual timeline novel, with the outer story in the present day and the inner one in the 1730s, set around the Jacobite community in Europe, exiled from England. 

In the present day IT specialist Sara Thomas is between jobs, when her cousin Jacqui who is a literary agent, approaches her about a freelance job. The job is not in her usual area, but instead involves working to break the code on a diary written by a young woman who was the daughter of a wigmaker in King James the Eighth's household in France. The first few paragraphs of the diary are written in English, but the rest is written in code, and one of Jacqui's authors is interested in using the diary to base his new history book on. 

Sara is on the autism scale, and has been tested as Asperger's, and she doesn't like working on a team, but more independently, which is why she is between jobs. Her affinity with numbers and patterns means that while she hasn't worked to break a code before, it is a natural area for her skillset. Sara will be working in the home of the woman who owns the diary in France, not far from Paris. 

As Sara works to break the code and transcribe the diary, we see adjust to the people in her new environment and make new friends. 

In the second timeline, Mary Dundas is a young woman whose father left her as a child with her French maternal aunt when her mother died. Her diary starts as she is contacted by her older brother to join his household, but she soon finds out that he hasn't told her his real reason for reuniting with her, and she finds a chance encounter with another woman passing through the same household she visits gives her confidence and tools to make the best of her new situation. 

Both woman have facility in more than one language and both face issues outside their comfort zone, and in environments unfamiliar to them. 

I really enjoyed seeing both of them develop. Mary's story is a true coming-of-age tale even though she is in her early twenties, as she has lived in her aunt and uncle's household alongside their children for most of her life. Sara's story also has coming-of-age aspects, even though she is older, as she learns to use the skills her brain has dealt her, find ways to face those times she struggles without being embarrassed, and gains in her confidence on the romantic front. I hope to see more following both these women. 

The London Restoration

Finished November 17

The London Restoration by Rachel McMillan

This novel takes place in the fall of 1945, with some flashbacks to earlier times during World War II. The two central characters are a married couple who must find their way emotionally to each other. They got married during the war and have only had a few visits since then, and have never lived together. Diana Somerville (nee Foyle) is a student of architecture, church architecture in particular. She loves the churches of Christopher Wren, but is interested in all churches. She is therefore a fount of information on the churches. Brent Somerville, her husband is a professor of theology at King's College in London. His specialty is the gospels by the apostles. The two met in a churchyard, where he was eating lunch and sketching his surrounding and she was admiring the architecture and made the first move in their relationship by approaching him. 

During the war, knowing that she would be bored by many of the tasks available to young women, one of Diana's professors recommended her for secret work at Bletchley Park. They preferred single women, so even though she recently married Brent, she signed up under her maiden name. There she worked on breaking codes, using her knowledge of German and other skills from her education. Brent knew that she worked for the Foreign Office, but wasn't aware of her secret work. He worked as a medic and orderly, transporting wounded, and near the end of the war was wounded himself. He still has trauma related to his experiences and hasn't shared the extent of his PTSD with Diana. 

At the end of the war, Diana's superior Simon asked her to do some work for him relating to a new challenge that he sees for the country, the threat of communism and Russian tactics. She has gone to Austria on this mission for two weeks, missing Brent's homecoming. 

With Brent not aware of what she has been doing, nor of what she was away in Austria for, there is a barrier that has been raised between them. With Brent not sharing his own war experiences, there is also a barrier from his end. The young couple are very much in love, and very smart people, but they must feel their way into this new phase of their relationship. 

When you add that Diana's recent actions may put them in danger, this novel offers a lot of suspense. I hadn't read this Canadian author prior to this and enjoyed the book.
 

The Dandelion Years

Finished November 11
The Dandelion Years by Erica James

Saskia has grown up in a house with three men: her father and her two grandfathers. When she was very young, her mother and grandmothers were killed in a car accident, and one of her grandfathers proposed this as a way of living. It has worked well. One of her grandfathers has taken on the cooking, one does the shopping and gardening. Her father manages the used bookstore in town. But now Saskia is an adult, beginning her own career as a book restorer and there is change on the horizon.
Her father reconnects with a woman he dated secretly a few years ago and her grandfathers are aging. Saskia discovers a book hidden inside another book when inventorying an estate collection, a diary dating from the Second World War by someone who worked at Bletchley Park. It intrigues her and she reads it avidly, alerting the young man who inherited the collection, who also becomes intrigued by the life history of the man who acted as a father to him.
A story of romance, loss, and connections.