First published 2024
Grace Banker teaches switchboard operations at AT&T when General John Pershing discovers his troops cannot communicate across French battlefields in 1917. The Army needs operators who speak both French and English, work under enemy fire, and handle classified information with absolute discretion. More than 7,600 women answer the call, including Grace, French opera singer Marie Miossec, and twenty-year-old Valerie DeSmedt from Pacific Telephone, who wants to fight for her native Belgium. These women become the first to take military oaths in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Male soldiers need a full minute to connect calls, but the female operators do it in ten seconds. Bombs fall around their stations as they work. Spanish flu spreads through the ranks. Some colleagues call them "hello girls" with contempt, but their speed and precision prove vital to Allied victory. Not every operator will survive the war.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, war, military-fiction
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: based-on-true-story, found-family
Setting: AT&T, Belgium, France
Period: 1917
480 pages · Paperback · HarperCollins
Content warnings: war