#BookReview The Fire by Night by Teresa Messineo

The Fire by Night by Teresa Messineo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A powerful and evocative debut novel about two American military nurses during World War II that illuminates the unsung heroism of women who risked their lives in the fight—a riveting saga of friendship, valor, sacrifice, and survival combining the grit and selflessness of Band of Brothers with the emotional resonance of The Nightingale.

In war-torn France, Jo McMahon, an Italian-Irish girl from the tenements of Brooklyn, tends to six seriously wounded soldiers in a makeshift medical unit. Enemy bombs have destroyed her hospital convoy, and now Jo singlehandedly struggles to keep her patients and herself alive in a cramped and freezing tent close to German troops. There is a growing tenderness between her and one of her patients, a Scottish officer, but Jo’s heart is seared by the pain of all she has lost and seen. Nearing her breaking point, she fights to hold on to joyful memories of the past, to the times she shared with her best friend, Kay, whom she met in nursing school.

Half a world away in the Pacific, Kay is trapped in a squalid Japanese POW camp in Manila, one of thousands of Allied men, women, and children whose fates rest in the hands of a sadistic enemy. Far from the familiar safety of the small Pennsylvania coal town of her childhood, Kay clings to memories of her happy days posted in Hawaii, and the handsome flyer who swept her off her feet in the weeks before Pearl Harbor. Surrounded by cruelty and death, Kay battles to maintain her sanity and save lives as best she can . . . and live to see her beloved friend Jo once more.

When the conflict at last comes to an end, Jo and Kay discover that to achieve their own peace, they must find their place—and the hope of love—in a world that’s forever changed. With rich, superbly researched detail, Teresa Messineo’s thrilling novel brings to life the pain and uncertainty of war and the sustaining power of love and friendship, and illuminates the lives of the women who risked everything to save others during a horrifying time.

********

The Fire by Night is a book that really shows the dark side of WW2. The book as two POV, first we have Jo McMahon who is stuck tending six seriously wounded soldiers in a makeshift medical unit. She had to do this all alone after bombs destroyed the hospital convoy she would have traveled with and to make it all worse is the unit close to the Germans. Her friend Kay is trapped in a Japanese POW camp in Manila. Both of them have gone through so much and in flashbacks, we get to see what happened to them, both during the nurse training as well as events before the predicaments they are in now. It's a story about heartache and of losses, but it's also a story about friendship.

I found The Fire by Night to be an engaging and strong book. The characters are well-developed and it's hard not to feel for them and all they have gone through in life and all they have to go through before the war is over. There is a moment at the beginning of the book when Jo realizes that the American soldiers are not as they appear in the movies, they are not always a charming Cary Grant type, they can be quite unpleasant and rude and that felt so good to read. Well, not that they can be assholes, but that not everything is black and white. It doesn't feel like a glamorized WW2 novel with no depth and flat characters. This book feels real and everything they go through feels real.

I'm deeply impressed with this book and I hope that Teresa Messineo writes more books like this.

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy through Edelweiss for an honest review!