06/10/2026
Today's A Mighty Girl Community Pick: "When We Had Wings" by Ariel Lawhon, Kristina McMorris, and Susan Meissner. In the months before Pearl Harbor, the American military bases in the Philippines were considered one of the most coveted assignments in the service -- a sun-warmed posting of ocean views, social clubs, and easy duty far from the tensions building across the Pacific. It is there, at the Army Navy Club in Manila in 1941, that three nurses become fast friends: Eleanor Lindstrom, who joined the Navy to escape a heartbreak back in Minnesota; Penny Franklin, an Army nurse from Texas carrying a private grief of her own; and Lita Capel, a Filipina civilian nurse working on the American bases.
Then Japan strikes, and the islands they'd thought of as a refuge turn into a battlefield almost overnight. As enemy troops drive across the Philippines, the three friends are pulled apart -- to a jungle field hospital on Bataan, to the fortified tunnels of Corregidor, to overflowing wards in the city -- tending a flood of wounded men with shrinking stores of medicine. When American commanders finally pull back, the nurses are left behind, taken captive and held for nearly three years as among the first women imprisoned as prisoners of war in the Second World War.
Their ordeal is drawn from the true story of the "Angels of Bataan and Corregidor," the American military nurses who endured years of internment while caring for thousands of fellow prisoners -- and emerged with every member of their group alive. Writing in turns, the three acclaimed novelists follow Eleanor, Penny, and Lita through hunger, sickness, and fear, and through the stubborn loyalty that keeps them tending the people around them when there is almost nothing left to give. The result is a sweeping, emotionally charged tribute to a corner of the war that has too rarely been told -- a story of friendship stretched across distance and held fast through years of captivity. Highly recommended for adult readers.
"When We Had Wings" is available at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9780785253044 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/3RpuT4c (Amazon)
For the acclaimed nonfiction account of the real nurses who inspired the novel, drawing on diaries, letters, and interviews with surviving "Angels," we highly recommend "We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese" for adult readers at https://www.amightygirl.com/we-band-of-angels
For a gripping novel about another extraordinary real-life woman of WWII, the American spy Virginia Hall, who organized the French Resistance from behind enemy lines, we recommend "The Invisible Woman" for adult readers at https://www.amightygirl.com/the-invisible-woman
For an award-winning YA novel about two young British women -- a pilot and a secret agent -- whose friendship is tested when one is captured in occupied France, we recommend "Code Name Verity" for ages 14 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/code-name-verity
For more historical fiction and biographies for adult readers about Mighty Women, visit our blog post "Telling Her Story: 40 Books for Adult Readers About Women Heroes of WWII" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=24501
