Abstract Essay, in its fifth season, features Shelley Blanton-Stroud, a longtime arts advocate and educator, as my guest.

Abstract Essay

An Unlikely Prospect: A World War II Novel

For fans of Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code and Jacqueline Winspear’s The Consequences of Fear comes a gripping novel, set in post–WWII San Francisco, about a young female newspaper publisher and a story that could change the course of her city’s future.

In the jubilant aftermath of Japan’s surrender in World War II, San Francisco erupts in celebration. But for Sandy Zimmer, the thirty-two-year-old widow publisher of the Prospect newspaper, the revelry masks a darker truth. In the chaos of the VJ Day Peace Riot, eleven deaths and six rapes take place.

Driven by journalistic integrity and battling her own instincts to maintain peace, Sandy directs her paper to investigate the riot. Her quest for truth pits her against formidable adversaries: her controlling civic-leader father-in-law, the newspaper’s resistant board, and authorities desperate to bury the scandal as they vie to attract the United Nations Headquarters to San Francisco.

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