Velva Jean Hart has come a long way since Velva Jean Learns to Drive, Jennifer Niven's first novel about her mid-century Appalachian heroine, but it's still a surprise that her commitment to her mama's advice to "live out there" would take her to the front lines of the Second World War as a pilot and, in Becoming Clementine, to a new identity.
After mastering the automobile at 17 and leaving Fair Mountain, N.C., to sing at the Grand Ole Opry, Velva Jean joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots, and as Becoming Clementine opens, she's just become the second woman to fly a B-17 over the Atlantic. Determined to be a "weapon of war," Velva Jean also has a second motive: to find her brother who went missing after D-Day. Fearless in her search for Johnny Clay, she argues her way into a co-pilot's seat of a B-24 mission to drop agents into France. Crash landing in the German-controlled French countryside, the survivors make their way to Paris, sheltered by the Resistance, where she is disguised as "Clementine Roux" and falls in love with the mysterious Emile.
Niven includes plenty of historical details about secret agent action and military operations in the European theater. The throat-clutching close calls and heartbreaking losses of the brave young "weapons of war" propel this novel forward as fast as a B-24. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller