5 stars
An amazing book by an amazing author! Mare’s War was nominated for the 2010 NAACP Image Award in Outstanding Literary Work (In the Youth/Teen category). It even won the Coretta Scott King Honour Award the same year, and I can see why!
The story of Mare is such a captivating tale, I finished the whole book in two sittings! (It would have been one if I wasn’t forced to put it down!) I didn’t even know that there was a women’s battalion in the second world war! Well, outside the nursing staff; let alone that there was a separate one for women of colour! I felt myself drawn in from the first page to the last, and have already lent my copy out for someone else to read!
So let’s get into it: What is it about?
This book follows Marey Lee (Mare) and her two grand daughters Talitha (Tali) and Octavia as they drive across the united states for Mare to attend a reunion. Tali, the older and louder of the two sisters, is very vocal about not wanting to go on this trip. Octavia, while just as upset about being on the trip, is one of the main narrating voices and is much quieter in her protests.
While the three of them travel across the country, Mare starts sharing her life story with the girls. She starts at about the time when she was fifteen, and working two jobs during the great depression. Davis does an amazing job of working the conversations in the car between the three of them into where Mare is in her story. She does it so that you can see a lot of parallels and differences between the different generations.
Theres also this nice little addition at the end of the chapters. The girls write postcards to friends and family along the way, and these are included at the end of each chapter. It’s interesting to see how they change throughout the course of the story!
What Happens & What Do I Need to Know for the Classroom?
There are some things you need to know before reading this book to students. However, if you know you can be prepared to address them appropriately, or send a note home before hand depending on your school situation, there won’t be any problems!
In one of the early chapters, Mare is living at home with her sister Josephine (Feen) and describing her life during the depression in Bay Slough, Alabama. However, there’s a graphic scene you need to be aware of and potentially address ahead of time or skip over. Mare and Feen’s mother is seeing a man (their father having long since passed). He tries to get a little too frisky with Feen, despite the protests of both girls. The scene implies that he is drunk and would rape her is Mare doesn’t stop him. She uses an axe to defend her and her sister, and is injured and almost killed in the struggle. As a result her arm is pulled from the socket and she is severely cut by the axe, her mother having to put her arm back in place once the boyfriend has been run off by helpful neighbours.
While this is not mentioned again later in the story directly, it does explain a lot. Such as why Feen is soon sent away to live with her aunt in another town. It explains why Mare is so protective of Feen, and why she ultimately decided to join the army. While key trigger words are not used, so the subtlety might go over some students heads, it is still a disturbing scene for those who realize what’s actually happening.
Later on in the story there is also discussion of living through the war, racial profiling, discrimination and hate. Because of these themes it makes for a wonderful story with lots of potential for classroom discussion! However if any one of these could be a potential trigger for students in your class it’s worth bringing up before the book even begins just in case.
Final Thoughts
Overall this is an amazing book with great lessons about an underrated topic. I personally didn’t even realize there was a women of colour division of the military! So this was extra fascinating to me. I also loved the human aspect of the girls ‘hating’ their grandmother and slowly understanding her personality and growing to understand her and care for her by the end of the trip. Overall a great story even with the possible triggers!
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