WOMEN OF WORLD WAR II MYSTERIES INTRODUCTION
"Bright and breezy mystery and romance."
--Kirkus Reviews (1943)
Not
long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and U.S. entry into the Second World
War, the government realized it would need to draft so many able-bodied men
that it would seriously deplete the country’s entire workforce, including
entry-level labor, skilled trades, office staff and management. The only
possible replacement was to be found in the ranks of the nation’s women. But
for women to join the workforce, major changes would have to occur.
Traditionally
characterized as an emotional and caregiving labor force—homemakers, mothers,
nurses, teachers and the like—women would have to adopt
a whole new view of
themselves and their capacities (as would men of them), and quickly. In a world
without TV or internet, a radical revisioning of woman’s capabilities would
have to be promulgated via radio, newspapers and magazines. So the U.S.
government called together leading writers and journalists, asking them to help
by printing and broadcasting stories, novels, and factual reports supporting
the heretical notion that women could make great factory and office workers—and
even run those factories and offices—without losing their “natural” urge to be
homemakers, mothers, and wives.
This
effort “to recruit women into the labor force,” as Nancy F. Cott writes in Women
and War, was the “major propaganda campaign” directed toward American women
during World War II. Thus, in the form of fiction and fact, the magazines and
books of the era “devoted much space” to “encouraging women to enter male
fields that were short of workers,” such as “manufacture of aircraft and
electrical equipment, work in shipping, metal trades” and of course munitions.
“To make war jobs look attractive … magazines published romances in which women
who entered defense industries and found fulfillment in performing important
work for the nation.” In such tales of romantic adventure, the heroines “were
rewarded for their dedication to difficult jobs with admiration from their
communities and love from desirable men.” These women “were praised for bravery,
loyalty to soldiers, intelligence, steadfastness, and competence.”
As
Cott and others have reported, this campaign began in the May 29, 1943 Saturday
While
in the prewar years Kelland typically contributed two or three novels per year
to the Post, and one or two others to publications such as The
American, Colliers, and Ladies Home Journal (in addition to a
few dozen short stories), he became so consumed with war work that he produced
only five novels and two short stories between 1942 and 1945. Four of the five
novels (Heart on Her Sleeve, Murder for a Million, Alias Jane Smith, and
Taxi! Taxi!) were written to fulfill the government request for stories
that would inspire women to take up the jobs left empty by male recruits. So
engrossed was Kelland in his war work, that it's likely he only wrote at all in
order to answer his country's call for such stories.
Digital
Parchment Press is proud to bring all four of these novels back into print as
The
In
each novel, you will meet a woman who had been living out
traditionally-proscribed “women’s” roles before the war, but found herself
unexpectedly plunged by the conflict into situations requiring a
quickly-learned array of new skills—running a plant, solving a mystery,
starting a business, outwitting spies, taking over a highly competitive
organization—and discovering within herself the wit, strength and
resourcefulness needed to perform them as well as, or better than, any man.
Kindle 99cents - $1.99
Heart on Her Sleeve (1942)
Murder for a Million (1943)
Alias Jane Smith (1944)
Taxi! Taxi! (1945)
