Wax: Pearl Harbor Changed Everything

Rosie the Riveter — a familiar icon: a determined face and a powerfully-flexed arm on a poster. Rosie embodied a real generation — women who came of age in the factories of World War Two. In her debut novel, Wax, author Therese Ambrosi Smith brings this generation to life on the page.

Tilly, born into a family of bootleggers in a small, isolated town, has her small, safe world blown open by the attack on Pearl Harbor. She leaves home for the California shipyards, and discovers there that she is stronger and more capable than she ever imagined. She and her new friends at Kaiser No. 3 confront life away from home, and comfort each other through the loss of loved ones. As victory gardens are sown, so are the seeds of the civil rights and women’s movements.

When the war ends, thousands of women are fired, their jobs offered to returning soldiers. Will they don heels and aprons when they take off their work boots? Will they give the factory work back to the men and take up jobs waitressing or selling cosmetics for a fifth of their war-time salaries? Among the friends at Kaiser No. 3, a plan is made, a confrontation erupts, and long-kept secrets are revealed.

Wax is about leaving home and finding ones own path. "Our grandmothers were Roosevelt's secret army," says author Therese Ambrosi Smith, "and Hitler gravely underestimated them. Like their soldier brothers, they too left ordinary lives to do extraordinary things." Wax is a story of transformative friendship and of secrets that can no longer be kept.

Praise

"Therese Smith gives an insightful portrait of a lost era — of the sudden sense of obligation and individual freedom that came to the women who worked in the shipyards in World War II. This book is significant historically, but it will also please readers with its likable characters, who find their own alternative America in their newfound responsibility and allegiance — not just to saving democracy, but to saving themselves and each other." — James Tipton, bestselling author of Annette Vallon, A Novel of the French Revolution

"engaging characters and intriguing secrets...a loving valentine to Rosie the Riveter...skillfully whisks the reader away on a journey to a time when everything seemed possible." — Kris Neri, author of Revenge for Old Times' Sake

"wonderful...Wax is a must-read." — Susan Wingate, award-winning author the Bobby's Diner series

About the Author

Author Therese Ambrosi Smith became fascinated by a remarkable collection of WWII oral histories at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park, and her debut novel, Wax, was born. Her short fiction has incorporated personal tales of work and travel: climbing mountains, surveying logging roads, designing parks and playgrounds, tending bar and selling fish. She completed the UCLA Writers' Program in June 2009, and is currently embarking on a "tin can camper book tour." Learn more at http://www.womeninthe1940s.com.

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