No Better Time
When the United States enters World War II, Dorothy Thom, a librarian at Atlanta’s Spelman College, and Lelia Branch, a single mother living in her own mother’s boardinghouse in Dayton, Ohio, each join the Women’s Army Corps. For Dorothy, it’s an adventure with the possibility of the trip abroad she’s longed for; for Lelia, it’s the allure of $21 per month, the chance to improve life for herself and her infant son. No Better Time follows these young WACS, and their friend Hazel, to Fort Riley in Kansas and ultimately to England and France, where the women process heaps of long-neglected army mail.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, not least because of its sprightly, resilient heroines, who must cope not only with the usual rigors of army life but with the racism of their fellow Americans, at home and abroad. Though it’s rather thin on plot—what there is consists mainly of the women traveling from place to place—the heroines and the vivid details carry it along nicely. In its depiction of these venturesome women doing unglamorous, but necessary and patriotic work, No Better Time reminds us that there are still plenty of tales about the war just waiting to be told.
