Serving up "fresh hope with a cup of joy," two Red Cross volunteers accompany frontline troops into the horrors of World War II Europe in Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea (The House of Broken Angels). They are armed only with coffee urns and a donut fryer, and sustained by an immediate and deep friendship. Irene, fleeing an abusive fiancé in New York, and Dorothy, so enraged by her brother's death at Pearl Harbor that she abandons her family's Indiana farm, commit to serving in a role available to women in 1943--Red Cross Clubmobile staff. They become "a perfect donut-coffee machine" team in their two-tone truck-kitchen, entering Europe after D-Day and offering the troops smiles, banter, and what "might be the last blessing from home."
The author, inspired by his mother's Clubmobile service, skillfully portrays the miseries the women endure, juxtaposing their witty dialogue and bravado with unsparingly detailed brutalities of war. Irene and Dorothy evoke hope for every "khaki saint" and for each other, a "nest of self where they felt safe." Unarmed, they nonetheless face frontline battle conditions. Deep in Allied-occupied Germany, as soldiers share rumors about "someplace called Buchenwald," the Americans savor the charming 17th-century atmosphere, a civilized hotel, and pastries: "Everybody laughed, everybody forgot the war was just outside the door, just for a minute." A dramatic climax, despite the story's wartime ironies and horrors, offers a ray of hope amid heartbreak. As Dorothy recalls the "Donut Dollies" years later, she tells her granddaughter: "Women are called upon to piece the world back together." --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.