YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE

Four young Englishwomen join the WAAFS during WW II and volunteer to fly barrage balloons: huge anchored dirigibles sent up over military sites to hinder the flight of enemy aircraft.

Kay Duffield, a lovely newlywed from a sheltered background, is front and center in this rather silly tale, the leader of the little band of “bops” (balloon operatives). With a brave sniffle or two, she packs her impossibly blond husband off to the front and proceeds to pine decorously over Steve Minton, the gorgeous man-next-door. When not thus occupied, Kay befriends the tomboyish Jo Stewart, who ran away from her miserable, grudging Mum only to confront the little vicissitudes of British army life: no hot water, crude outhouses, canned beans and bad bread for tiffin, etc. Class lines are crossed and new friendships formed when more colorful characters are brought on stage, livening up the sluggish pace: Emily Bevan, a Welsh farmer's daughter who'd much rather wrestle barrage balloons than cranky sheep; and Biddy Bachelor, an impoverished but shrewd girl from Liverpool, who's delighted with their primitive accommodations and loves to gab. Rarely, in fact, have so many talked so much about so little. But all is not beer and skittles. It’s darkly hinted that the young women are not strong enough for the risky work they do—and, predictably, one of their number will be dead before the story draws to its chatty close. The war is familiar ground for this prolific author (Someone Special, 1995, etc.), but Saxton's gushy style is irritating. And higgledy-piggledy heaps of trivia don't help.

More than you ever wanted to know about dirigibles.