When We Had Wings

When We Had Wings is the first collaboration by the three authors, who are well-known for writing historical fiction set in and around World War II. Their body of work often depicts resilient women whose courage and independence challenge society’s gender norms of the time: Ariel Lawhon’s Code Name Hélène (2020) presents a fictionalized account of the life of Nancy Wake, an Australian who worked as a British intelligence officer during the war; Kristina McMorris’s Sold on a Monday (2018) was inspired by a photograph (published in a 1948 magazine) of four siblings with their mother and a sign advertising the children for sale; and Susan Meissner’s Only the Beautiful (2023), set in the years leading up to and after the war’s conclusion, follows an orphaned girl unjustly institutionalized and forced to give up her infant daughter. The three protagonists of When We Had Wings likewise demonstrate profound courage in the face of personal and global struggles, and the authors’ collaborative effort emphasizes the untold heroism of the women, nurses, and ordinary civilians often left out of the war hero narrative.

In their Authors’ Note, Lawhon, McMorris, and Meissner state that they were inspired by the first female prisoners of the war (the book’s title is a subtle nod to the fact that these nurses were known as the Angels of Bataan) and wanted to tell a story that had been deliberately lost to history: “[W]e hadn’t heard of these nurses in all our years spent researching and writing in this genre [because] the United States government forced these women to sign papers saying they would not discuss their experiences after the war” (412). The authors credit several nonfiction works for the research and inspiration behind their novel: We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of the American Women Trapped on Bataan (1999) by Elizabeth M. Norman; The Indomitable Florence Finch: The Untold Story of a War Widow Turned Resistance Fighter and Savior of American POWs by Robert J. Mrazek; Rescue at Los Banos by Bruce Henderson; and This is Really War: The Incredible True Story of a Navy Nurse POW in the Occupied Philippines by Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi.

Their research is apparent in the novel’s vivid descriptions of the nurses’ duties, their daily struggles as professionals and prisoners of war (POWs), and the joy and strength they find in one another. While the main characters are fictional, many real historical figures contribute to the representation of resilient women: Maude Davison, Laura Cobb, and “Mama Josie” Nesbit, who inspire hope and determination in the nurses, were real individuals who “led their nurses through literal hell and should be household names” (413-14). Likewise, the inclusion of real figures Ida Hube, whose generous donations provided the real Angels of Bataan with the supplies that ensured their survival, and Helen Cassiani, “whose impressive reveal of a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red at her twenty-fifth birthday party in the jungle was too fun not to include” (413) lend humanity and humor to the novel. Blending historical fact with fiction, When We Had Wings contributes to the canon of World War II literature by focusing on women who faced death every day but never gave up hope, enriching the genre through its multifaceted characters and their journeys.