Silver Wings, Santiago Blue by Janet Dailey

Her writing style kept us distanced from the characters, she focused on too many characters, and she never spent enough time immersing us in the setting that I could really feel like I was in the 1940s. Dailey told the story of women service pilots who have received far too little recognition and respect for their work ferrying military planes during WWII, but as a romance novel this book fell flat. It doesn't fit many of the conventions we've come to expect.

I think this book would have worked better as a historical novel than the romance novel it was marketed as. Having read nothing else of Janet Dailey's, I'm not sure whether this book is typical of her work or typical of the romance genre at the time it was written. When my college class discusses WWII in two more days I will be recommending this book to many of my students.

If newly published today, this would certainly be more like a 'relationship' novel since the relationships between these women were explored - not unlike the prolific novels of Debbie Macomber. I didn't find that to be true and their uniforms were certainly described in detail. She also complained that there was not enough description of clothes. Most romances in the 1980's were not explicit and today many are still not. No romance, not true - although certainly not much in the way of sex scenes which the other reviewer lamented.

I personally can't imagine anything drier than descriptions of planes. Certainly no grateful nation since the records were sealed until the women's lib movement of the '70's forced them open.Īnother reviewer complained that the book was dry, then complained that there were not enough descriptions of planes. By the end of the war there were 38 female casualties whose bodies were shipped home at their families expense. They also transported new planes to the airfields, including the new type of plane-the jet. My question would be who would want to reenact what these women did? They were given an assortment of beat-up planes to haul targets for new male recruits to shoot at. There is a web-site that is slowly getting underway for women re-enactors of WWII. Actually there isn't much out there about these amazing women pilots even in 2007. This book was released in the 1980's, not long after the record of women Wasp's was released in the 1970's.

Silver Wings, Santiago Blue by Janet Dailey