In the heart of the US capital, Dinah Kendall’s role for the Office of Strategic Services isn’t the thrilling espionage career she dreamed of. Instead, she spends her days crafting rumors aimed at undermining Axis morale. As Dinah navigates her duties, she uncovers a startling revelation: Her mother, Lillian, was once a codebreaker, cracking military ciphers during the Great War alongside some of the nation’s most brilliant minds. The deeper Dinah dives into her mother’s past, the more secrets come to light–including the heavy cost of high-stakes codebreaking.
Lillian, though resolute in her decision to avoid war work, reluctantly enters the fray when old friends in Washington, DC, seek her expertise. Both mother and daughter find themselves working behind the scenes–and working together–to support the Allied cause. But just when Dinah begins to excel in her new position, everything she’s worked so hard to obtain comes crashing down around her. Caught in a web of intrigue and unsure who to trust, she must piece together the truth in time to confront the shadowy threat that could compromise the impending D-Day invasion.
A compelling World War I and World War II home front novel inspired by true stories of codebreakers and OSS agents. Courage, danger, and a mother-daughter bond interweave in this compelling historical tale …
CW/TW – discussion of mental health issues/treatments/conditions
Dear Ms Green,
Last year I enjoyed “The Foxhole Victory Tour,” with the unusual setting of a USO tour of Allied bases in North Africa. It was more historical fiction/found family with only a slight romance thread. This book uses a dual timeline but is also more historical/women’s fiction and though it has a codebreaking backbone, there is also a realistic mother/daughter conflict to be resolved.
Dual timeline books have been a thing for years and sometimes they work well for me and at other times, one section will feel lesser. “The Codebreaker’s Daughter” has something going for it that increases the odds that I’ll like a book with two timelines and that is that those times are closer together and that characters are in both time frames.
There are actually several codebreakers in the story beginning back in the days just after the US entered World War I. Lily works on the Illinois estate of the eccentric millionaire George Fabyon whose pet project is to prove that Francis Bacon actually wrote the plays of William Shakespeare. To do that, he’s gathered a diverse group of intellectuals among whom are Elizebeth and William Friedman. Elizebeth notices Lily’s linguistic talents and brings her on board to help with nascent code breaking efforts with Lily eventually revealing her past which includes a mother with mental health struggles.
In early 1944 Dinah, Lily’s daughter, does decoy work similar to what Englishwoman Noreen Riols described in her book “The Secret Ministry of Ag and Fish to help check that spies almost ready for deployment can keep their mouths shut. But Dinah wants to do more and when she’s recommended for work at the OSS in DC, she’s thrilled. But maybe this work isn’t going to be as easy for her as Dinah hopes.
One thing I really like about this book is that neither Lily nor Dinah are top notch “more special than anyone else” people. Instead, they’re good but, like most of us, they’re not the best. Lily grows in knowledge and confidence in her code breaking skills but she knows that she’s not as good as Elizebeth or William. Dinah begins to get the hang of the job she’s assigned – Rumors division – but she doesn’t suddenly blaze like a star through the department. I can relate to both women better as more ordinary people.
Both of them also make mistakes in their efforts to do more and be better. Lily’s fraught relationship with her own mother and determination to do better raising Dinah leads to a stiff relationship between them, one that Lily has to recognize and make the effort to thaw and overcome. Dinah’s zeal to prove herself has her breaking rules in ways that she thinks are okay in the pursuit of the ends but which might be her undoing. Her confidence cracked, she’s got to face what she did and come back from it.
Both mother and daughter grow as people. Lily’s youth was spent hiding what was going on in her home which has forged a lifetime of keeping her emotions and vulnerabilities hidden. Dinah’s sunny nature has her trying to make friends with a prickly fellow boarder with Issues that bring out other boarders’ less than friendly reactions. Lily has to learn to let people in and be more open with Dinah while Dinah has to decide if fitting in with the majority is worth shutting out someone who needs a friend more than she’s willing to admit.
The historical details which add color as well as the actual historical elements worked into the plot are great. I think the care with which the Friedmans are portrayed and the inclusion of details of Fabyon’s actions are excellent in addition to being used well to help the action of the book. The conflict between Lily and Dinah is realistic, convincingly portrayed, and given time to build before being resolved. The religious aspects are included to show that Lily and Dinah’s family are believers but without turning preachy.
This is a more quietly emotional story that focuses on the people as well as the actual espionage they do. As such it has a slightly slower pace at times. I enjoyed the relatable issues that main characters Lily and Dinah must face and resolve as well as how actual real life people and events are incorporated into the book. B
~Jayne
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Jayne
Another long time reader who read romance novels in her teens, then took a long break before started back again about 25 years ago. She enjoys historical romance/fiction best, likes contemporaries, action- adventure and mysteries, will read suspense if there’s no TSTL characters and is currently reading more fantasy and SciFi.
