Mother Daughter Traitor Spy
June 1940 has been a momentous month for Veronica Grace, who graduated from college and lost her job at practically the same time. She and her mother, Violet, seize the opportunity to move from New York to Los Angeles and start fresh with help from Violet’s brother, Walter.
Determined to move forward and be independent, Veronica takes a job as a typist but quickly learns that she is working for a strident Nazi propagandist. Violet and Veronica are dismissed by the FBI when they bring them this information, so they begin working undercover with spymasters Ari Lewis and Jonah Rose. Action ensues as the bombing of Pearl Harbor approaches and Veronica and Violet find increasingly clever ways to infiltrate the California Reich and thwart their plans.
The novel is well-paced and the characters feel real without being overly serious. Moments of levity around Violet’s menopause, for example, add depth without weighing the book down. Readers will also enjoy the way MacNeal weaves in figures such as the Roosevelts and Herbert Hoover.
Veronica, Violet, Ari, and Jonah are all based on real people, as are several other characters in the book. MacNeal provides a brief but helpful foreword to explain a bit about who the four main characters in her novel actually were. There’s also an afterword that details who various characters are based on and gives a bit of information about them. Acknowledgments, sources, and historical notes sections are very gratifying for history buffs looking for glimpses into the historical figures behind these escapades.
