By Ande Jacobson

Kate Quinn’s The Alice Network is a masterful look at the heroic efforts by a female spy ring during WWI and beyond. While a work of historical fiction, she weaves in a lot of history following two timelines. The first is WWI and the efforts by the women of The Alice Network, a real underground network of British spies operating in foreign territory gathering huge amounts of crucial information that ultimately helped win the war. The parallel timeline in the “present” is just after the end of WWII. The story follows Charlotte (Charlie) St. Claire on her quest to find her missing cousin. On her travels, she connects with Evelyn Gardiner, a cranky, eccentric old woman with gnarled hands and a mysterious past, and her driver and protector, Finn Kilgore. The trio make their way through Europe first to help Charlie with her quest, but also to satisfy an old score of Eve’s. Continue reading →