On a cross-country road trip with their standoffish grandmother, Mare, resentful teens Octavia and Tali (both would rather be home for the summer) gain insight into Mare’s life as she tells them about serving in the Women’s Army Corp (WAC) during World War II. Mare’s reminiscences, told in first-person, present-tense chapters headed “Then,” form the heart of Tanita S. Davis’s novel, which paints a vivid picture of the past. Mare’s challenging home life and small Alabama town, the friendships she develops in the WACs, her training and assignments in the army, and the racism she and other Black soldiers face at home and overseas feel immediate and real. The experience in the WACs gradually changes Mare into a more confident young woman with eyes and mind open wide. The present-day chapters, headed “Now,” chronicle how both the cross-country journey and their grandmother’s stories affect the two sisters, who are often at odds. But surprising camaraderie—with one another and with Mare—develops over the course of the journey. (Ages 12–15)

Meet Mare, a World War II veteran and a grandmother like no other. She was once a willful teenager who escaped her less than perfect life in the deep South and lied about her age to join the African American Battalion of the Women's Army Corps. Now she is driving her granddaughters—two willful teenagers in their own rite—on a cross-country road trip. The girls are initially skeptical of Mare's flippy wigs and stilletos, but they soon find themselves entranced by the story she has to tell, and readers will be too.

Told in alternating chapters, half of which follow Mare through her experiences as a WAC and half of which follow Mare and her granddaughters on the road in the present day, this novel introduces readers to a larger-than-life character and a fascinating chapter in African American history.