Julia Cooke's sharp, insightful third book, Starry and Restless, follows the lives, careers, and connections of Martha Gellhorn, Rebecca West, and Emily "Mickey" Hahn--three pioneering reporters and writers whose work changed journalism and took readers to places few other writers dared go. Cooke (Come Fly the World) draws on each woman's correspondence, plus interviews and their extensive bodies of published work, to paint a nuanced portrait of three women who refused to sit quietly on the society pages, but who also struggled to balance professional and personal success.
Cooke details the early circumstances that inspired in each woman a hunger for storytelling, travel, and independence. In alternating chapters, she takes readers through the careers they built around (and sometimes against) political events and headwinds. She takes them seriously as practitioners of their craft, praising Gellhorn's daring journeys to various front lines during World War II; West's prolific, genre-crossing work on travel, politics, and family life; and Hahn's persistence in building relationships in Shanghai (which led to her writing a biography of Madame Chiang Kai-shek and her sisters).
Making one's way as a female writer has always carried with it certain challenges, and Cooke is honest about those difficulties and her subjects' dogged attempts to overcome them. She also highlights how Gellhorn, West, and Hahn supported one another, through lunches, letters, and professional encouragement. Starry and Restless emphasizes the ways these three women helped shape the popular understanding of major events and conflicts in the mid-20th century--and the ways their lives and work helped set a new standard for female journalists who craved adventure, success, and a good story. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams