Twenty Lives at War – World War II Home Front

Book Four of Twenty Lives at War is a propulsive mosaic of twenty Americans caught in the war's "other" front, from December 1941 to June 1945. A Honolulu switchboard operator and an overworked nurse ride the shock of Pearl Harbor. A Cape Hatteras spotter watches for U-boats; a Brooklyn riveter fights blame on the factory line. At Tanforan, a Japanese-American teenager becomes a courier of memory; in Los Angeles and San Francisco, women track sabotage and lead blackout searches through fog and fear. In Iowa, a ration-board clerk slips into compromise; in Pittsburgh, a newsroom assistant risks print to tell the truth of the "Double V." A Pullman porter chooses decency on a Chicago platform; a Black mechanic insists an engine's facts outrank hierarchy. In Washington, a speechwriter battles cleaned-up language; in Kansas, a farm wife protects a desperate kid. A Leavenworth prisoner, a Boston dockyard priest, Indiana parents facing three telegrams, and a Mobile girl at a bus depot carry the arc to love, loss, and hard-won hope.