The specific story told by Farrell is even more harrowing than you might first expect. She delves right in, and although the book is a nonfiction book aimed at young readers, it is frank and powerful. Battles and sieges start the war in the Philippines, leading to the brutality of Bataan (a story you probably have heard before).

But before MacArthur’s famous return, the nurses are gathered into a prison camp at the University of Santo Tomas, where our heroines are interred for the duration of the Japanese occupation. It was a terrible internment, full of brutality and deprivation, one that words don’t seem to be able to do justice to, one so seldom discussed.

Told largely through first-person accounts, the book uses individual women’s stories to highlight different aspects of the war and of the larger story here. Because the players in this story are women, this book tells an underreported arc of military history, of women in combat. Click here for more, including a video.