Take a step back into 1942, a time of war, transformation, and freedom that women had gained. Close friends Mary and Marge abandon their careers as Iowa teachers and go out on a adventure to Washington, D.C. where they work as fingerprint-filing clerks in the FBI. Excited and uncertain, they quickly come to realize that the world they were in was changing at a rate much more rapid than they ever had imagined.
After reaching Union Station, they meet Dotty, a brash and fast-thinking musician who abandoned her all-girl band in New York City in pursuit of a new life. Exposed to the ugly realities of unmitigated racism, Dotty secures a clerical employment in the government, courtesy of her greatest asset, a typewriter.
Three women are close friends who rent a room in a dilapidated mansion which is also a restaurant and boarding house. There they get to know Natalie, a crazy artist who wants to become a big star in Hollywood. The lives of the four women intertwine as she tries to sell her screenplays, and each of them is trying to cope with her problems in the world that has been ripped apart by war.
The two of them form a friendship that cannot be broken; they go against the norms of society and seize every opportunity that arises. A novel of survival, ambition, and sisterhood, “Government Girls” by Michael Wilson is an incredible read on courage in the face of the unknown, and how hope and friendship can still guide us when we are at a crossroads.
