Bird’s Eye View

Book Review

I saved this WWII novel to read in June 2024 and the compelling story had me racing against the Allies countdown to finish it by June 6, the 80^th anniversary of D-Day. That week, media coverage of the single biggest wartime attack in history only magnified the imagery and atmosphere of this book’s own war story.

Elinor Florence gives us a captivating view of the war years through the eyes of young Canadian woman in Britain. If you are a fan of historical fiction, especially war novels with heroines rather than heroes, then you will love this well-researched page-turner.

The story begins in 1939 with a naïve but tough-minded 18-year-old determined to serve the British Empire. Our engaging narrator, Rose Jolliffe, is a smart farm girl from rural Saskatchewan who gets a job with the local newspaper to save enough money to fly to England and join the British Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

The novel parachutes us quickly into the gritty and grim reality of a country at war after the Blitz, Germany’s eight-month bombing of London in 1940-41. Following the Canadian losses at Dieppe in 1942, we feel the country’s anguish and resolve to defeat Hitler.

Rose’s experience taking photos and developing film lands her with a unit that interprets aerial photos taken by spying and bombing pilots. Hunched over her desk with a magnifying glass, she scrutinizes gray-scaled aerial images of roads and rivers and farms in the battlefields of rural France to decipher Germany’s diversionary tactics and deception defenses.

Her in-depth knowledge of farming and astute interpretation skills earns her a promotion to intelligence officer at the air photo intelligence headquarters, giving the reader insight into the lesser-known aspects of airplane photographic reconnaissance. Through Rose’s unit, we experience the daily tension as interpreters race to stay ahead of Hitler. We glimpse the staggering scale of the Allies all-in, 24-hour sea, land and air attack on the beaches and cliffs of Normandy’s coast.

Florence places her reader over Rose’s shoulder, giving us her bird’s eye view of France’s farms and beaches as well as closeups of the war weary and homesick civilians and soldiers who never lose hope.  Our heroine proves to be as tough a survivor as any Briton fighting for their homeland, sustaining severe injuries rescuing a baby from a bombed building.

The novel’s detailed and descriptive passages of pre-war Canada mark Rose’s passage from innocence to maturity over the long war. Her rose-colored memories of home – the golden grain swaths and green grassy fields, blue spruce trees and endless cobalt blue skies – sharply clash with England’s damp, gray skies and her scratchy blue woollen uniform and meals of grey meat and watery soup.

When the BBC broadcasts the end of the war, the reader feels the joy as crowds gather in the streets, watching the blackout curtains being ripped down and the city’s church bells ring for the first time in six years.