Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of A Good Woman (Large Print)

A Good Woman (Large Print)
reviewed A fine book on + 92 more book reviews


This book is about what makes a "good woman." "Good," of course, applies to men as well as women, but we follow a young woman whose family is a member of upper New York society from the day she finds that the ship aboard which her family were returning from Europe, the Titanic, has sunk. She lost members of her family in that tragedy, and the book chronicles her maturation into a woman of good intent who realizes her goals in the best way, through due diligence.

She marries her dear love and finds herself involved in a scandal over which she has no control. She volunteers as a medic in France before the US joined the Allies in WWI, where her years of volunteer work in hospitals and on Ellis Island serve her well. She enters medical school, following her strongest desires, but returns as a medical volunteer when that war drags on and the number of casualties is too much to be borne.

Things happen to her, as they will to everyone, and how she deals with each crisis is the core of this book. In the end, of course, her life is well lived and she reaps rewards she could never have foreseen.

It was a good read, not particularly done in the old formula style Steel used so succesfully, and I look forward to seeing the movie!