The Harvey Girls by Juliette Fay (Get Red PR Book Tour)

 

Title:  The Harvey Girls

Author:  Juliette Fay

Narrated by:  Cassandra Campbell

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 11 hours and 47 minutes

Source: Thank you, Partner @getredprbooks and Gallery Books for the review copy of physical book copy of The Harvey Girls by Juliette Fay.  Thank-you to @simonaudio for the audiobook and @netgalley for e-book review copies.

What is your favorite restaurant?  I have a lot of favorites but tend to favor local restaurants that are family owned.

Two young women from very different backgrounds start work as “Harvey Girls” in the 1920s.  Harvey Girls were well paid female employees that worked for a chain of restaurants that spread through the west every one-hundred miles or so and served quality, inexpensive meals.  Charlotte was born into a wealthy blue-blooded family, but after she ran away to marry her husband, she feels she has no where to turn to escape him when he turns abusive.  She changes her name and strikes out on her own as a Harvey girl.  Billie needs the money to support her family with eight younger siblings.  She pretends to be older than her years to get a job as a Harvey girl and sends her money back to her family.  As both girls are assigned to a restaurant in the Grand Canyon, will they be able to keep their secrets and their jobs?

My thoughts on this novel:

·       Cassandra Campbell is an audiobook narrator that I enjoy, and I thought she did a great job narrating this book.  It was enjoyable to listen to.

·       I loved how a large part of the book took place at the Grand Canyon as it developed into a tourist destination.  It was interesting.

·       Both main characters had very interesting love stories in this novel, and I enjoyed them.  The book was told through their dual POVs.

·       Violence against Catholics was portrayed in the book as Billie attended mass with Hispanic friends who are attacked.  She is also dismayed when she is assigned to work at the Grand Canyon and discovered there is not a Catholic church in the area for her to attend.  She also has much to decide when she realizes that her potential beau is not Catholic.

·       This novel also took a hard look at abusive marriage.  It was hard to divorce at that time and to support yourself as a woman.  When a woman was trapped in an abusive marriage, what could she do?  A job as a Harvey girl was a very well-paying job at the time for a woman.

·       Charlotte as a learning moment as well as she realizes her inadvertent racism towards Native Americans at the Grand Canyon.

·       The novel has an interesting Part II which flashes forward to 1996 and the reader learns what happened to the characters in the novel.

·       There is a great foreword and Author’s Note at the end which give details about Fred Harvey’s empire and other historical details in the novel.

Overall, The Harvey Girls by Juliette Fay was an interesting historical fiction novel about a unique time and place in American history.