In the midst of this election, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Smith College Relief Unit, who went off to France in the middle of a war to save lives– but still weren’t able to vote at home. On November 6, 1917, after a strenuous, decades’ long battle, women won the right to vote…

When the Smith College Relief Unit arrived in Paris in 1917, one of the first things they did was tour the American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly, an immense building which had previously been a school, but which had been entirely given over to the care of the wounded, ambulances constantly coming and going. When the…

We all joke about cooking with pumpkin in October, but guess what?  The Smith College Relief Unit was doing it, too, back in 1917! They might be afflicted with rationing and war bread, but the Smith College Relief Unit found themselves the object of relentless invitations to dinner from neighboring groups of lonely American and…

The women of the Smith College Relief Unit were all changed by their experience in France– and so was their prose. Reading the letters of the Smithies in France and their compatriots, the American ambulancemen and aviators, one of the things that jumps out is the zippy new dialect they all adopt, an enthusiastic mix…

As you probably know by now, my upcoming book, Band of Sisters, is about the Smith College Relief Unit, eighteen determined Smith alums who went off to the front during World War I to bring aid to French villagers on the front lines, women and children whose homes had been destroyed by the Germans. So…

I am so thrilled to unveil the cover of Band of Sisters (aka the Smith Book) coming your way on March 2nd, 2021! Here’s the official blurb: A group of young women from Smith College risk their lives in France at the height of World War I in this sweeping novel based on a true…