No Better Time

A Novel of the Spirited Women of the Six Triple Eight Central Postal Directory Battalion

De: Sheila Williams

Narrado por: Janina Edwards

“Just the novel to elevate these unforgettable voices.”—Shelf Awareness

The acclaimed author of The Secret Women and Things Past Telling returns with an engrossing historical novel about a little known aspect of World War II—the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only Black WACs to serve overseas during the conflict.

In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Dorothy Thom, Spelman graduate, librarian and Francophile, joins the Women’s Army Corps wanting to do her part for the war effort. Longing for adventure, she has one question for the recruiter: “Do you think I’ll get to go abroad?”

As Dorothy and her sister WACs discover, life in the Army is an adventure filled with unexpected deprivations and culture shock. Women from all levels of society, secretaries, teachers, and sharecroppers, work together to navigate a military segregated by race and gender. At boot camp, the “colored girls” are separated for processing. At Ft. Riley, the women’s barracks are rustic and heated by coal-burning pot-bellied stoves while German POWs spend their incarceration in buildings with central heat and hot water.

In early 1945, Dorothy and eight hundred African American WACs cross the turbulent North Atlantic to their post in England. Their orders are to process the mail sent to GIs from their loved ones back home, an estimated 17 million pieces. The women arrive to find mail stockpiled for over two years in warehouses and airplane hangars, many pieces in poor condition, the names illegible.

In England and France, the WACs traverse a landscape of unimagined possibilities. With their outlooks changed forever, they return to the United States as the catalysts for change in America and build lives that transcend anything their ancestors ever dreamed of.

No Better Time illuminates a love of country and duty that has been overlooked until now.

©2024 Sheila Williams (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

A must read

This was a great book and I enjoyed every minute aside from the last 10. It seems like this author wanted to finish this book really quickly and it was left with some loose ends.

Good WWII Black Army Women

Loved finding out the trials and tribulations of Black women in the WWII army. Historical events brought ar
richness to the story. Interesting to see how they were treated by their own vs the "enemy", A must read!

Wonderful read!

It was very well written and captures a significant part of history and the impact women have had in preserving our freedom.