Sisters of the Great War is a work of WWI historical fiction by Suzanne Feldman. It tells the story of Ruth and Elise Duncan, two sisters from Baltimore, Maryland who are chafing under both societal restrictions and family restrictions. When Ruth is rather firmly denied the option to go to medical school to become a doctor she decides to go to Europe and volunteer as a nurse during the war with her beau, Dr. John Doweling. Her sister Elise, a rather talented mechanic, refuses to let her sister go by herself and volunteers as an ambulance driver and paramedic. They both end up stationed at the same makeshift hospital as John near Ypres, Belgium. Now they must learn to navigate independence and figuring out who you are and who you want to be all while also navigating the horrors of war and the hospitals of the front lines. They are also confronted with the harshest lesson found in war, not everyone can be saved. However, they do manage to find ways to work on accomplishing their dreams when Ruth finds a way to work as a doctor and Elise manages to find unexpected companionship in some of the other ambulance drivers.
This was a decent book in that it did a pretty decent job of portraying the reality of front line hospitals during WWI. I feel like the author did a lot of research for that and it shone through in those depictions. You can also see where the author did research into the general cultural norms of the time when showing the individual problems facing each sister. That was, honestly, pretty well done. The characters were also clearly defined and you can easily see the difference in temperament between the two sisters as it changed perspectives. It made it easy to identify with them as they worked on pushing their own boundaries and fighting for what they wanted. At the same time there was one problem that seemed to be pretty important, at least to me. Over the course of the novel there seemed to be a pretty bad sense of time. I say that because the section dates seemed to not be correct, repeatedly, and the sense of time scale was badly off. Outside of the dates used as section headings there were very few, if any, indicators about how much time had passed and they didn’t always line up correctly with the dates. This really threw off my sense of continuity for the story and made me wonder about what I might have missed in their story and what was going on. I get that people lose track of time in a war but it was still really frustrating to me that this was going on. While I did enjoy the story I was also not overly impressed because of this. I am giving this story only three out of five stars.
This was a decent example of historical fiction and would hold the most appeal to readers who enjoy that genre or for any readers who like reading about WWI. At the same time I would caution any readers considering this book that it contains some rather graphic and gruesome content with the occasional violence. It may not be all that easy for everyone to read because of that. I would heavily caution younger readers as well because of that so probably only older teens or adults should consider this. If you decide to try this just keep in mind the content and be prepared. As always you are welcome to share your thoughts in the comments.