The Wartime Sisters by Lynda Cohen Loigman

She was alone in the wake of their parents’ death in an accident, and her ill-fated marriage left her a victim of abuse. Ruth had enough of that unwanted responsibility as a girl she doesn’t want it now as a married woman raising children - especially when her husband is called away from his position at the Armory to dangerous duty in Europe.īut back in Brooklyn, Millie was rather desperate. From Ruth’s perspective, Millie is trouble - a person who always needs looking after. Ruth does paperwork, and Millie puts triggers together on the assembly line. Loigman further complicates the bond between the sisters through the jobs they have in Springfield. The narrative is structured to oscillate among three kinds of scenes: Scenes that give an overview of their early years scenes set in Springfield that reveal the sisters as young adults making their separate ways in the world and scenes reverting back to more detailed Brooklyn episodes that explore the seeds of conflict and unwise decision-making that continue to have consequences in their new environment. More open and spontaneous, Millie’s attractiveness to people, especially to boys and then men, is a constant threat and humiliation to Ruth. Ruth’s controlling nature, an echo of their mother’s, leaves Millie feeling demeaned and marginalized. They seem to have been the victims of unrealistic expectations and misguided parenting. The Brooklyn-born Kaplans, first Ruth and, later, Millie (the younger by three years), relocate to Springfield, Massachusetts, to rebuild their lives after shaky, if conventional, beginnings. These are women who had factory jobs or positions, clerical and otherwise, that supported the manufacture of weapons. to enter WWII and during the war years that followed. The other is the wider sisterhood of women who toiled in preparing the U.S.

The more obvious is the horribly strained relationship between two sisters, Ruth and Millie Kaplan. The title of Lynda Cohen Loigman’s new novel, The Wartime Sisters, has two dimensions.

The Wartime Sisters by Lynda Cohen Loigman