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<p>The term &#8220;war bride&#8221; typically referred to women during WWI and WWII who married soldiers from other countries. Helen Byron&#8217;s &#8220;War Brides&#8221; doesn&#8217;t exactly follow that definition for all her characters in this WWII set novel.</p><p>&#8220;War Brides&#8221; is the story of a little town in the English countryside: Crowmarsh Priors, an idyllic village in Sussex. There, five very different women become close friends. Each woman was brought to the town for different reasons and as the war progressed, their lives impacted one another.</p><p>Alice is the daughter of the late town vicar. She was engaged to Richard, a naval officer who broke their engagement during a trip to America where he met Evangeline, who he married after only knowing for a few days. Little did he know Evangeline was hiding a secret romance with her own cousin, the half-African American, Laurent, and was pregnant when she seduced Richard. She winds up back in Sussex, although Richard soon leaves town for the navy.</p><p>Tanni is 17 and Jewish. She is forced to marry Bruno, a childhood friend studying in England. She ends up in London, but is evacuated to the countryside not long after she gives birth to her first child.</p><p>Frances Falconleigh is the scandalous daughter of a powerful admiral, sent to Crowmarsh Priors to live with her godmother, the great lady of the town.</p><p>Elsie Pigeon is a 15-year-old poor London resident sent to the countryside to live out the war in safety.</p><p>&#8220;War Brides&#8221; begins in 1995 with Alice preparing to return to England for the 50th anniversary of VE Day. She introduces four of the brides as elderly women and hints they are all returning to the village.</p><p>Then the author returns back to prewar time. She takes her time introducing each of these characters and setting up their respective backgrounds before they arrive at Crowmarsh Priors or meet one another.</p><p>It takes a while to get to the actual plot but the characters are all interesting and it&#8217;s good to find out why they ended up in the town. It&#8217;s frustrating to read because the story takes a really long time to get going.</p><p>As the story progresses, there isn&#8217;t much in the way of plot. Each chapter switches perspective from Evangeline meeting her lover in London to Frances becoming part of Churchill&#8217;s Special Operations Executive. Each woman&#8217;s story is interesting, particularly Frances&#8217;, but because there are so many perspectives included (even other characters from the town have point-of-view chapters), Byron never goes into much depth with each woman.</p><p>The years pass from prewar to 1944. The women team up to try and rescue Tanni&#8217;s twin sisters, who disappeared somewhere in France. When their plans go awry, their lives drift apart from one another.</p><p>Fifty years later, they meet again in Crowmarsh Priors. This time, they are all quite elderly, but hellbent on avenging one of their own. There&#8217;s a whole subplot that gets wrapped up here, about English people who collaborated with the Germans. This was fascinating, as was Frances&#8217; training as a special operative, but way too little time was spent on these subjects. Byron should have scrapped much of the day-to-day wartime story and focused solely on Nazi collaborators and the women who became spies and operatives for Churchill.</p><p>&#8220;War Brides&#8221; was OK, but not one I&#8217;d recommend. There are far better books about women during WWII out there.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">&#8216;War Brides&#8217; is written by Helen Byron. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_warbrides.jpg</photo1><caption1>&#8216;War Brides&#8217; is written by Helen Byron. </caption1><photoCredit1></photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Dorothy Sasso</p><p>On the Books</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p>&#8216;War Brides&#8217;</p><p>Author: Helen Byron</p><p>Page Number: 496</p><p>Publisher: Lake Union Publishing</p><p>Rating: &#9830;&#9830; 1/2 </p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Dorothy Sasso is a former Soap Opera Digest writer and a private school teacher. She is busy reading books and raising her two daughters.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

On the Books: ‘War Brides’ drags along for subpar read