Characters When Christmas Comes Again Book

It's Dec and officially the Christmas season, then allow'southward do the two Christmas-themed Dear Americas! This book differs from nearly of the others in several means, but it's notwithstanding interesting and well-done.

Book: When Christmas Comes Again: The Earth War One Diary of Simone Spencer, New York City to the Western Forepart, 1917, Beth Seidel Levine, 2002.

In social club to write a novel about a girl involved in the ground forces, she had to be quite a fleck older, then Simone is seventeen at the commencement of the novel (compared to the average Dear America protagonist, who is eleven, twelve, or thirteen, and very occasionally older). This is also one of those rare DA novels about a wealthy, upper-class girl—the vast bulk of them focus on girls who are poor or middle-class, I would assume for relatability reasons among the majority of readers. Actually, very interestingly, another one is A Time For Backbone, which likewise takes identify in 1917, in a strange coincidence that I think was probably not intended.

Anyway, Simone is "society" indeed, thanks to her incredibly wealthy begetter, and a bit bored of things. She doesn't know what she wants to exercise after graduating high school, just now since state of war has just been declared, it adds an "exciting" hurry to things. Simone'southward mother is French and owns a chapelier, or hat shop, because she was bored to tears and refused to sit around doing cypher and presumably, being lodge all day. Simone's female parent was a humble daughter in a bake store in Paris when her male parent met her, and Simone has grown up on stories about Paris and true love, fate, etc., which is going to come dorsum to be important.

Simone's older brother, Will, is married to a very upper-class daughter named Caroline, whom Simone didn't quite like at first, merely somewhen comes effectually to. She much prefers the company of her best friend Francie, who is "outrageous," and her mother and Sally, their cook. So she roams around the city with Francie (with the chauffeur following closely behind!), lament nigh Francie's very haughty mother and their exams.

Will, rather than wait for the draft, opts to sign upwards for the regular army himself, which merely about wrecks Caroline, Simone, and her mother. But they put on brave faces when he goes off to basic training and then ships out, and despite all Simone's sadness and fear for him, she wishes she could practise something besides just rolling bandages and forgoing meat on Fridays. She decides to go into nursing school, merely her father insists that before that she volunteer a bit at the hospital where he works.

But she hates it—information technology'due south more than than she bargained for. She'south fine with doing inventory and rolling bandages and all the other stuff, but she runs into a immature man who's been lying in a hospital bed with no 1 to come up and come across him and hasn't said a word since he got there. She keeps going for a couple of weeks, reading to him to attempt and draw him out, and he finally responds to the finish of A Christmas Carol (despite it existence August, because this is a Christmas-themed book) and confesses that he signed up under an causeless proper name. Simone arranges to have his parents notified and they go far just limp with relief, and Thomas's rehab manages to speed right upwards after that. But and then, once he'due south up and around—he leaves quite all of a sudden, spring for California and a job in the "pictures."

So given Simone'south discomfort with the nursing profession, she is ludicrously excited when they announce a call for French-speaking young women to serve as telephone relay operators at the front end! Simone is thrilled that her French will finally pay off, and when they tell her she'due south likewise young, she loses her mind with frustration. (As would I). Just after a couple of weeks they remove the age restriction (since apparently, French-speaking American girls were quite not as thick on the footing every bit they had presumed) and Simone signs up without so much as a past-your-leave from her parents. But they aren't terribly upset with her (and even her grandparents are proud in spite of themselves), and a friend of her father'due south swears her in as an officer in the eye of Dec.

Before Christmas, Simone's mother takes her and Francie shopping to a little Christmas store, where Simone sees a picayune porcelain affections merely leaves it at the store in favour of something else. Simone gets her army compatible equally a gift, "quite chic" she pronounces it. And and so it's only a couple of weeks before she starts training—and instantly finds herself manner over her head. One of the things I like most most this book is how Simone starts out with really loftier hopes so gets flattened by stuff that's much harder than she anticipated—which is very realistic for teenagers, as it was for me and I am confident millions of others. Things are never quite as easy as people make information technology wait.

Simone also finds herself in hot h2o with the other women since she is far wealthier than all of them, and they resent her as a snob. Nearly of them are from humble beginnings, and Simone feels quite outclassed by them in terms of capability—since she'south really not been asked to practise a matter for herself in all her life. But later half dozen or vii weeks of training they send out across the Atlantic, and Francie gives Simone as a going-away nowadays the little porcelain affections from Christmas.

Simone is dreadfully seasick and miserable the whole way, and once they go far to England she stumbles beyond a daughter curled up under a lifeboat sobbing dreadfully, who says she's frightened out of her wits. Simone confesses that she, too, has been crying every night, and they become fast friends. Alice, the crying daughter, comes from a poor Boston family (although we never larn how she became fluent in French). Once they make information technology to Paris, Simone and her go traipsing through her mother's one-time neighbourhoods for a flake earlier being posted to their first duty station in the countryside.

Similar many things, information technology's far harder than Simone could have imagined. Only she gets used to the piece of work—stressful and challenging though it is, she finds it rewarding and exciting to be able to assist in such a physical way. And that June, she and the other girls go to a trip the light fantastic and she gets to run into her brother! Who has non been notified that she'south overseas and consequently thinks he's going crazy for a flake, but after the initial stupor wears off, he'due south excited to meet her. She'south more than excited to see his friend, Sam, and Simone thinks she's falling in love at first sight.

Which turns out to exist quite short-lived! The adjacent week, Volition and Sam come past to accept dinner with Simone and Alice, and Sam turns out to have quite a chip on his shoulder most the club set up in general, and says his female parent worked in a lodge house all her life, and that "those people" are never the same to their friends as they are to the aid. Simone storms out with Alice correct backside her, and when she sees Sam next in a few days they spat a bit about whether or not she'southward spoiled before she and Sam dance to that doughboy classic, Til We Meet Again. I'1000 not fabricated of stone, information technology'south actually very affecting and sweetness. She gives Sam half of the porcelain angel Francie gave her and keeps the other half with her.

For the rest of June and July and August, the girls are working quite hard and the front end keeps advancing closer and closer to them. Simone is so caught up in her fretting nearly her blood brother and Sam that she doesn't notice that Alice is coming downwards with something until she's virtually too sick to stand upwardly. So Simone scoops her upwardly and carries her bodily to the hospital, sick with terror, where the nurses tell her that Alice has a very bad case of influenza. And the next solar day, Alice entreats her to write a letter to her family because Alice is too weak to write, and the twenty-four hour period after that Alice dies. Once more, I'm not made of stone! I cried! And I cried over again when Simone writes to Alice's family! God, information technology's sad. And realistic.

A calendar month or so later Alice'south expiry, they move some of the girls to the front where the fighting is fiercest. They're involved in the battle of St-Mihiel, which is an Allied success, and in October they're moved forward again to relay messages straight from the front end lines. Only in November, of course, the armistice is announced and the fighting is ended very suddenly—and although from our perspective, we tend to see the final few months of the state of war equally a winding-down, information technology'southward very true that to the actual participants, there was no such thing. Many, if non most, of the combatants were non aware of any peace talks going on, and the ceasefire came every bit a surprise—but every bit it does to Simone.

And consequently, they're sent dorsum to Paris, and Simone and the others find themselves a fleck at body of water without any real jobs to keep them busy. She occupies herself by looking for Volition and Sam, interrogating every soldier she sees, but no 1 has even heard of them. She'due south shipped home in mid-December, and her parents—and Will!—are there to greet her at the docks at her arrival! She'due south charmed, but Volition tells her that Sam was killed in one of the offensives. Her parents are alarmed at her depression over this, then her father tracks down the family that Sam claimed his mother worked for, and they tell him that the woman Sam claimed was his female parent died in a burn down many years agone. So Simone goes to run into the address where Sam says he grew up—and information technology'south an orphanage.

Exhausted with loss and grief and heartbreak, Simone starts to believe that maybe Sam really is dead, and possibly he never told her annihilation that was true in the time they spent together. So she starts volunteering at the rehab hospital once more in an endeavour to experience better near her broken middle. On her fourth mean solar day of volunteering, 1 of the women asks for help with a patient who'southward refused to speak—and, of course, it is Sam. Simone throws away all her manners and good breeding and throws herself on him to kiss him and cry a bit, but Sam tells her that he didn't make whatsoever endeavour to contact her because he was so aback of his wound. His wound that is a leg missing from the knee. Poor guy.

Simone bolts abode to tell everyone, and Will is then thrilled that he goes that very night to see Sam, and Simone plans to go with her parents the next day—just her father pulls a lot of strings to get Sam taken to their firm for Christmas, where Sam gives Simone the other part of her missing angel and they hang it on the tree together.

In the epilogue, we learn that Simone and Sam were married the next year once Sam was confident enough to dance with his prosthetic leg. Sam went to work for Will at the real-estate business, but the Depression brought a great deal of hardship to their family. Simone had 3 children, and she and Sam moved to Paris in their retirement years, and lived in Simone's mother'south neighbourhood until their deaths.

Rating: A-. I didn't intend to like this one equally much as I actually did. Really! It was one of the after DA books, and I always thought of it was kind of hokey (given the Christmas-y theme, and and so on) but it's really very sugariness and romantic and sad in a lot of places. Levine's commencement novel is a wonderful niggling story and mannerly without being cloying, and Simone is a lovely and well-realized character without falling into stereotypes. Very sweet.

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Source: https://yahistoricalvault.com/2015/12/15/when-christmas-comes-again/

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