The Good War

By: Elizabeth Costello

Narrated by: Eve Passeltiner

In 1948, Louise Galle, a chemist and former Rosie-the-Riveter, is pursued by a wounded veteran who, with her deceased husband, was a prisoner in the Philippines during World War II. In New York City in 1964, Louise's daughter Charlotte falls for the butch next door and receives an undeniable call to make art. The Good War unfolds over the course of watershed summers in the lives of two very different women who share a desire to make it new even as they reckon with painful truths. Atmospheric, lyrical, and psychologically astute, The Good War is for anyone who knows that there is always more to the story of what America was and is.

©2025 Elizabeth Costello (P)2025 Tantor Media

Complex and interesting characters

I loved this book from Elizabeth Costello. I found the characters richly complex in an interesting setting with a background of war and the aftermath of war. I also loved Kristin Hannah’s The Women and found both books full of women’s perspectives on war and how war affects women’s relationships to men, society and other women.