Bluebird: A Novel

Now this was a story! I was captivated by this story from page one to the last page. Written during and after WWI it is a very new and refreshing historical fiction novel. It's a dual time novel, however, the most recent story set in present day time is small compared to the more prominent story set in 1918 and a few years beyond. The present day part of the story does tie in to the earlier story set during the prohibition years, but it is more of a introductory story to the main story. In present day we find an assistant museum curator, Cassie Simmons, meeting a young man renovating a home which just happens to have belonged to her great great grandfather Jeremiah Bailey. He finds a wall filled with old bottles of Whiskey dating back to the 1900's. The more prominent story is about a nurse Adele Savard and a wounded soldier Jerry Bailey. Jerry and his brother John are both army tunnellers. They tunnel beneath enemy trenches and plant bombs. I never heard of this activity before, but I looked it up and it did exist. (Royal Engineer tunnelling companies were specialist units of the Corps of Royal Engineers within the British Army, formed to dig attacking tunnels under enemy lines during the First World War.(Wikipedia). I learned something new about WWI.) Adele was a nurse serving with the sisters in a hospital in Belgium where Jerry was taken when he was injured. The soldiers called these nurse's Blue Birds because of the blue uniform they wore. (More than 2,800 nurses served in the Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC), as fully-enlisted officers in the specially-created all female rank of Nursing Sister, with relative rank and equal pay to men – the first women among the Allied forces to do so. Nicknamed “bluebirds” because of their blue uniforms and white veils, Canada’s nursing sisters saved lives by caring for wounded and sick soldiers as well as convalescents, prisoners of war, and even civilians on occasion.) This was also something new I learned about WWI by reading this book. After the war Adele and Jerry met up again because they were from the same region in Canada. Adele was still a nurse and Jerry was a Rumrunner. He and his brother made and sold whiskey under the brand Bailey Brother's Best. The story is both exciting, sad, happy and tragic. The prohibition era was fraught with crime, murder and corruption. The illegal whiskey was sold to the American's during prohibition as well as to the Canadian Taverns and Speakeasy establishments. Jerry and John Bailey have an ongoing feud with Big Will (Willoughby). This feud is dangerous and costly to the Bailey's business. The feud is not only about business but a personal vendetta Willoughby has against the Bailey brothers from childhood. I haven't read any other books that cover both WWI and the Prohibition era, and actually none on the prohibition era in Canada. It was a different prospective and a very new and different book. I enjoyed reading this historical and romantic book. It is a very exciting book to read and I guarantee you will not want to put it down until the last page has been read. I do recommend this book. Thanks to Genevieve Graham for writing an entertaining and historical book, to Simon & Schuster Canada for publishing it and to NetGalley for making it available to me.