The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg ****

Charminghistorical novel about the WASPs who ferried aircraft during World War II and were then forgotten for thirty years. Two timelines: Mrs. Earle Poole, Jr., known to her friends as Sookie, from Alabama, following the marriages of her three daughters, 2004. Fritzi Willinka Jurdabralinski, from Pulaski Wisconsin, during World War II. Sookie’s mother Lenore Simmons Krackenberry is a dominating Southern matriarch, straight out of Gone with the Wind. Fritzi is the eldest of four sisters, who find their wings when all the boys go off to war. A heart-warming, empowering story of how white women roles change from 1940 to 2010.

 The story takes off when Sookie discovers that she was adopted. Her real birth certificate reveals her to be nine months older and Fritzi is her mother. “Earle, do you know what that means? Oh, my God. I’m sixty years old! Oh, my God—I’m older than you are!” “I’ve been a card-carrying member of the Daughters of the Confederacy since I was sixteen, and I’m not even a Southerner. I’m a Yankee.” Throughout the book, Sookie struggles with nature versus nurture. All her life she felt trapped by her genetics and the expectations of her mother. Part of the story is her journey to discover who she is and break free of her upbringing.

In contrast, the four Jurdabralinski sisters are not trapped by expectations. First, when the men in the family leave, they take over the family business Wink’s Phillip 66 filling station. They run the station 24/7 doing everything from cleaning windows and pumping gas to changing tires and services engines. They are audacious and wildly successful. During the war, they all fly aircraft in the WASPs. Here again, they do a great job and have a good time doing it. However, it is still the 1940s and women have a long way to go. The women faced prejudice as WASP pilots from training through when they were disbanded and unceremoniously kicked out without credit or benefits. They also faced harassment, rape, and murder.

The book presents an idyllic view of life in Alabama and Wisconsin, idealizing the white Southern lifestyle and history, and small-town Wisconsin. Interestingly, for a book set in Alabama from1940 to 2010, there are no Blacks, and a single Mexican (domestic), Conchita. The book is a heart-warming story that rings a bit off in contemporary America.

A positive story of white women’s progress over seventy years, skipping over the intervening years.

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