The Girls in Navy Blue

A Novel

By: Alix Rickloff

Narrated by: Dylan Moore, Carlotta Brentan

A gripping and compelling dual timeline novel about three women who joined the Navy during WWI to become yeomanettes and the impact their choices have on one of their descendants in 1968.

1918 - America is at war with Germany, and, for the first time in history, the US Navy has allowed women to join up alongside the men. Ten thousand of them rush to do their part. German-American Marjory Kunwald enlists in the Navy to prove her patriotism. Suffragette Blanche Lawrence to prove that women are the equal of men. And shy preacher’s daughter Viv Weston in a desperate attempt to hide from the police.

Even as the US military pours into France and the war heats up, the three yeomanettes find friendship and sisterhood within the Navy. But all their plans for the future are thrown into chaos when Viv’s dark past finally catches up with her.

1968 - Newly divorced and reeling from a personal tragedy, Peggy Whitby unexpectedly inherits her estranged great-aunt Blanche’s beach cottage outside Norfolk Virginia. But her fragile peace is rattled when she begins to receive mysterious postcards dated from 1918 when Blanche served as a Navy yeomanette.

Curious to learn more about her mysterious aunt and uncover the truth behind the cryptic messages, Peggy is drawn deeper into the lives of the three young Navy girls. But her digging uncovers more than she bargains for, and, as past and present collide, Peggy must decide if finding out about her aunt is worth the risk of losing herself.

©2022 Alix Rickloff (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers

Took awhile to get used to the switch between times at first.

Love the story and learned something new about history. Enjoyed this. It would make a good movie.

DON’T MISS THIS GREAT BOOK! I LEARNED SO MUCH I NEVER KNEW BEFORE…

WOW! I LOVED this book that toggled back and forth between 1918 and 1968.

1918…Three women who are strangers join the Navy at a time when women didn’t even yet have the right to vote. The Navy needed extra hands, but the majority of the men in the Navy resented their presence and thought their ability to contribute to the war efforts was a joke. They made their opinions quite clear to the women.

1918… Blanche: She’s rich, stubborn, supremely self-confident and strong-willed. She befriends Vivian Westin, a shy, scared young woman who is quiet and withdrawn. Vivian is desperate to find any small room she can and just blend in, disappear as best she can. Blanche runs into Vivian in a diner, decides she likes her and offers her a room in her cottage right on the beach in Norfolk, VA.

Not long after, Vivian meet Margaret, a fellow Yeomanette, who is also looking for housing. She too ends up taking a room in Blanche’s lovely, homey cottage.

Three women who were total strangers upon meeting, develop bonds of friendship that will last a lifetime until the last of them dies. They all have deep secrets that they are trying to keep to themselves, but eventually after developing trust in one another, those secrets come to the surface. The women are there for all the ups and downs in each other’s lives while they are living together (there are more downs than ups). They even struggle to keep each other alive through the Spanish Flu epidemic.

1968… Peggy: She’s recently divorced after having just lost a baby. She inherits a falling down cottage in Norfolk, VA., from her Aunt Blanche, whom she’s never met. She moves there from New York in hopes of starting her life over again. It isn’t until she drives up to the cottage that she sees the cottage is barely standing and realizes what it will take to even get the cottage into selling condition.

Peggy feels as beat up and falling apart as the cottage. She doesn’t have the energy to get out of bed, much less take on the project like the cottage. Then she meets a handyman who looks like he’s down on his luck too. He needs the work and he says he can do everything that’s needed — fix the foundation, do the plumbing, electrical rewiring, everything.

Amazingly, ALL he wants in return for his labor is to park his RV in Peggy’s driveway (man, where can I sign up for this deal)?! All Peggy has to do is pay for materials. Peggy can’t WAIT for the work to begin. The sooner it starts, the faster she can sell the dump and be rid of it.

But, as the weeks go by, a strange thing starts to happen. As Peggy is cleaning out Blanche’s massive wardrobe and all her correspondence between her, Vivian and Margaret, Peggy finds herself becoming more and more attached to the cottage AND more and more curious about the life of the aunt she never knew and her friends. As she begins to dig, and the more the story begins to unravel, the more interesting things become.

Then POSTCARDS, dated 1918 begin arriving at the cottage, addressed to Blanche, signed from Vivian. Peggy doesn’t understand this…Blanche has been dead for over a year and Vivian died several years before Blanche did. HOW can a dead woman be sending post cards and reminiscing about their time together as young women? Things become curiosier and curiosier…

The story is beautifully told from the perspective of each character during each time period. It’s done in such a way that there is no confusion about which character is speaking or which time period the character is in.

I never knew about the proud work of the Yeomanettes. I would like to know even more.

One aspect of the story I particularly enjoyed is that I live right here in the center of Hampton Roads, VA where the entire story took place. I am very familiar with the places mentioned in the book — Newport News (I live in Yorktown, VA., which literally blends with Newport News); I know all the streets in Norfolk mentioned in the book, the names of the Naval hospitals, etc. It was QUITE interesting to try to compare in my mind these places as I know them now, and trying to imagine them as they were way back in 1918.

Now, Hampton Roads is very congested with traffic; sometimes almost gridlocked. It’s hard to believe it was once a “bustling place” that relied on horse and buggy and trolley cars, long before cars ever came along. The history buff in me would LOVE to have experienced that time!

This is definitely a book I will be listening to again (immediately). I’m excited to learn that this author has other books, based on historical events. I’ll be reading those too.

The narration was OK in this book. There were some odd pronunciations such as the word “ensign,” and the reading was very stiff and unnatural (almost as if the narrator had an accent that came and went). In other places, the narrator was quite pleasant to listen to. Hopefully the narrator will be more consistent in the books I buy in the future from this author.

I HIGHLY recommend this book!

Glimpse into lives of women in service

Women’s stories are often lost, forgotten or untold. While fictional, it still gives perspective and insight into what could have been the lives of our brave grandmothers and great grandmothers. I had to listen carefully to keep up between 1918 and 1968, but well worth it!

Lots of characters to keep straight when listening.

Lots of characters, could have spent more time on character development instead of so much detailed surroundings that was irrelevant. Good story.

Now I want to learn more

Really enjoyed the storyline and want to learn more about the Yoemenettes now. A few bits of the performance bugged me such as the way Ensign was pronounced. It’s en-sin not en-sign. Also the reading of hush little baby. I didn’t get reading it in a stony voice when anyone reading the book on their on would without a doubt sign it to themselves as they read. Anyway, I would highly recommend to anyone who enjoys wartime historical fiction. We don’t often see WWI books so this was a nice change for me.

I was in the Navy too…

Boy am I glad I was in the Navy in the early 2000’s and not in the early 1900’s. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Ladies in service

Loved the characters but hoped for more background on women’s rights at that time. I learned for much 💙

Excellent story

Excellent story that I as a female retired naval officer could identify with. Thoroughly enjoyed the book having been stationed in Norfolk and Little Creek Virginia.

beautiful

beautiful story providing the perspective of women in the military early on! artistically woven between 1918 and 1968.

Great book!

I learned a little bit of history about yeomanettes while enjoying the book. I don’t usually like books that jump back and forth in time but this one was well done.