The War I Finally Won
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
The War I Finally Won continues the story of the splendid Ada Smith, her brother Jamie, and Susan Smith, who is now their legal guardian, although Ada refuses to call her "Mum". (Jamie has no such hang-up.) What's more, Susan, with the help of Lord and Lady Thorton (we met Lady Thorton in The War That Saved My Life) finally got Ada that surgery she needed. Ada now has two almost normal feet, and can wear shoes and walk without crutches.
We have several new major characters: the entire Thorton family (Lord, Lady, Margaret -- that's Maggie to Ada, -- and Maggie's brother Jonathan, a fighter pilot in the RAF.). In addition, we have a young teenage girl, Ruth, who comes to live with Susan and Ada and Jamie. Ruth has a gift for mathematics, and Susan (who has a first from Oxford in math) has been hired by Lord Thorton to tutor Ruth for her Oxford entrance exam. Thorton is himself a mathematician doing secret war work, as is Ruth's father. In an Author's Note, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley tells us that they (and also eventually Ruth) are working with "the famous codebreakers of Bletchley Park".
Ruth, her father, and her mother are German Jews, driven out of Germany by Hitler's persecution. Ruth's mother is interned as an enemy alien. Initially Ada and Jamie are suspicious of Ruth, suspecting her to be a German spy. This foolishness is not confined to the children -- Lady Thorton is even worse.
Ada is still Ada. She is still unable to accept that she deserves anything good. She is profoundly ignorant of the world, a result of having been confined by her awful mother most of her life to a single room, and not going to school. For instance, she doesn't know what a zoo is, and has never heard of dragons. She is outraged at the whole concept of stories about imaginary beasts. Ruth, in striking contrast, is an educated and sophisticated teenage girl. Both girls have rough edges, so in some ways it's a difficult friendship, yet it works. For instance, we have this conversation,
“Do you have any pictures of your grandmother? Of any of your family?”
“None of your business,” Ruth said.
I said, “I’m not your enemy.”
She looked up at me silently.
I said, “I’m not.”
She said, “But I’m German. I’m your enemy. Remember?”
I said, “You hate Hitler more than I do.”
Ruth nodded. “Very true. But I still won’t tell you about my grandmother.”
I waited. After a pause she spoke again, looking down at her desk. “If I start letting things out of my heart,” she said, “if I talk to you, if I bring out the photographs, I will fall to pieces. I won’t be able to endure living here. I won’t be able to learn what I need to learn to help my family. If I crack at all, I will come undone.”
She kept her voice absolutely quiet and even.
I said, “I know how that feels.”
“I thought you did,” she said. “Now go away.”
The War I Finally Won doesn't take us to the end of the War. (Since we all know that the allies won, that is not really necessary.) The main story takes us to early 1942. The December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has just taken place, and as a result the USA is in the war, and the writing is on the wall. The book ends with a brief epilog set in May, 1943.
*The phrase "Invincible Ada" does indeed occur in the book. I'll leave it to you to discover where and how.