BookLife Review: Good Night, Irene (Luis Alberto Urrea, author) by Carol O'Day

Historical Fiction, World War II, European theater, American Red Cross volunteers, Donut Dollies, front lines of France, Belgium and Germany, female friendship, PTSD, battle scenes.

Luis Alberto Urrea excavated his family history and uncovered a seldom-told piece of World War II history. From it, he created a best-selling novel, Good Night, Irene. Urrea’s grandmother was an American Red Cross volunteer in World War II. During the War, the American Red Cross outfitted enormous trucks as travelling kitchens, staffed them with volunteers and sent them travelled around the war zones dispensing coffee and fresh donuts. Known as the Donut Dollies, the women were charged with a morale mission–to bring a little piece of home to homesick and weary soldiers. The women were not nurses or cooks. Many, like the author’s grandmother, were fleeing bad or abusive marriages, grief or poverty and others sought adventure.

Urrea and his wife conducted extensive research, through American Red Cross archives, war museums, and personal letters, photographs and interviews. Urrea’s grandmother served in the American Red Cross Donut Dollies corps, and while the novel is drawn from her experience and that of her colleagues, the story is imagined. No records of the itineraries or postings of the ARC trucks survives, but survivors report postings all along the front lines in Britain, France, Belgium and Germany, so Urrea creates the story there with vivid and realistic war scenes, including constant changes of location as the trucks follow the troops, injuries, deaths, and romances.

Urrea’s prose is rich and layered. His primary characters are Irene and Dorothy, each with rich backstories and developed thoroughly as characters. Both are based on real women who served in the War, and Urrea draws narrative details from personal histories, letters and interviews. Urrea creates a rich backstory for each and carefully crafts the arc of their friendship. Other volunteers come and go, soldiers appear and head off to sorties or battles and reappear at the window of the donut-mobile, but the friendship between Irene and Dorothy deepens in keeping with the deep bond that soldiers in arms experience in other war stories. Their penultimate near-death experience in Belgium, which requires them to save one another to survive cements their bond. Urrea’s command of details that both enrich and advance the story is masterful. Irene is a New Yorker, with a sunny and flirtatious personality, a love of fashion and makeup and all things luxury. Urrea attributes a love of nature and poetry to Irene. Her appreciation of flora and fauna at each posting grounds the novel in the country sides of each European city and village they visit. Dorothy is described as tall and lanky, nicknamed Stretch. She grew up on a farm with a brother who was killed in action in the War. She is an orphaned tomboy, with a restlessness, a sense of adventure and daring that bring her into contact with dangerous black operations.

These details all pay off in the arc of the novel. Dorothy’s extracurricular escapades cause her to need to flee the war. An accident leaves both Irene and Dorothy believing the other has died. The women’s lives unfold differently. Irene remains mired in untreated trauma and shell shock from the war experience. The novel’s ending is both poignantly sad and deeply satisfying, and not to be spoiled here. Lovers of historical fiction and World War II enthusiasts seeking a fresh slice of history and a new perspective on that War should grab this book and enjoy the donut mobile ride.

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