Review: "The Secret Sister" by Liz Trenow

 

The Secret Sister by Liz Trenow
Published April 2023 via Bookouture
★★★

With the war still raging, everyone must do their part—but for Lizzie, that's more complicated than for most. Her twin brother Edward, traumatized from his experiences with the "Dunkirk little ships" when he was little more than a child, flees, and there's a small window in which Lizzie can make a choice. Ed's posting is not to the military but to the mines: if she takes his place, can she save him from the consequences?

I picked this up because I've never heard of the "Bevin Boys," young men who were conscripted not to do battle but to work in the mines. It's a fascinating history, though: the British government, realizing that they'd conscripted too many miners and were running low on the coal needed to power ships, trains, and electrical supplies, put out a call for volunteers. The response fell far short of what was needed, though, and so the government started taking a full tenth(!) of new conscripts and sending them to the mines.

So it's that position that Lizzie finds herself in: deep in a mine rather than, say, on the battlefields of France. As a Bevin Boy, she's treated with suspicion and derision—anyone without a uniform is suspected of being a deserter or a "conchie," a conscientious objector. For Lizzie, of course, it's a bit more complicated than usual (imagine trying to wash the filth of the mines off while preserving your secret identity when the showers are communal!), but there are some things in here that I never would have thought about: that it took decades for the government to acknowledge the efforts put in by the Bevin Boys; that their required service lasted years longer than the war; that the horses used in older mines were kept underground for almost all of their working lives, allowed up to the surface for "holidays" only rarely (in this book, once a year). It's never an easy job, but it's worth it to Lizzie to know that she's doing her part in more ways than one.

Three things I would have liked to see: First, I'd have loved to see more from the supporting characters in this book. Lizzie makes two friends, and we hear a bit about them, but we get virtually nothing about the other Bevin Boy trainees, and nothing about the long-term miners Lizzie ends up working with. How many of her trainee cohort are glad to be in the mines rather than in battle, and how many of them would have preferred the armed forces, and where do they come from, and how is their experience in the mines? And what are the stories of the long-term miners? Are they following family tradition, do they resent the Bevin Boys for their equal pay and educational opportunities, what are their different styles of work? We don't really know, but I'd have gladly read an extra fifty pages if it meant those experiences were worked in. Second, I'd love to know if there would have been consequences for Lizzie, as by that point in the war women were receiving call-up notices as well (for different roles than men got, generally), and, well. Without spoiling anything, I'll say that it's not possible for Lizzie to be in two places at once. And third...again, trying to avoid spoilers, but in the epilogue Lizzie thinks something to the effect that the men who served longer than she did had a much greater right to be acknowledged than she did. But that saddens me, because (aside from the fact that Lizzie puts herself in a dangerous position voluntarily, to help both country and family, and experiences trauma as a result!) it wasn't just the Bevin Boys whose contributions went unrecognized—many women who did critical and perilously dangerous work as spies, for example, remained unrecognized for their work because...they were women, I guess, and if it was women's work then it couldn't possibly have been important.

For all that, I'm grateful to learn a bit about a part of history I didn't know about—and The Secret Sister made for an easy springboard into that.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a free review copy through NetGalley.