The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

In 1940 three very different young women end up working as code breakers at the secret intelligence base in Bletchley Park, England.  Osla, is a wealthy but lonely debutante who is doing "her bit" in the war to try to earn respect. Mab is from East London, and has clawed her way up from poverty in hopes of marrying above her station and giving her future children a better start than she got. Beth is a socially awkward spinster who has been emotionally abused by her mother her whole life, but who has a naturally brilliant, almost savant ability to recognize patterns. They form un unusual friendship that is eventually tried to its breaking point by the pressures of war and their vow of secrecy about their work. Years later, one last puzzle, one last code to be broken, brings them back together and allies them against a common foe.

This is a long book, and I almost didn't make it through.  Like many WWII books, the characters start out so hopeful but as the war goes on things start to fall apart.  I imagine that is how it really was for people living in the war zone, but I was having a stressful week, and the character's stress was leaking into my own life. I pressed on, though and was rewarded with a wonderful ending for the book.  Quinn is both a great writer and a meticulous researcher.  Several characters in the book were inspired by real people and Quinn did a lot of work to make the settings and conditions of life at Bletchley Park as realistic as possible.  There is a long-ish post script that separates for the reader the fact and the fiction of the book.  Even though reading the book was tough for me, and there were one or two particularly grim scenes (edging past PG-13 to the R realm, though the author doesn't give a lot of detail, just suggests deplorable activities), I will be recommending this book to my friends who like WWII historical fiction. (656 pages, 2021)