The Wolf Ticket

In the last months of WWII, Pascale Tailland, an American translator serving in the U.S. Women's Army Corps bound west out of Germany with her unit, sees a refugee on the station platform wistfully contemplating her train. The refugee is dressed like a young man, but Pascale, intuitively knowing that it is a woman, pulls her aboard as the train starts to roll.These two women, thrown together by chance, torn apart by the destruction in wartime Europe, straggle to find each other again across a chaotic continent. The soldier is as fearless with her heart as with her ideals; the Polish refugee, who has survived years of desperation and danger, has the cunning of a wolf.In their attempts to reunite they are hindered, helped, and loved by many women. There's Nell Tulliver, international war correspondent -- hard-boiled, soft-hearted, and well-connected; Captain Corinne West, a competent and proper officer, unduly influenced by love as she bends military rules; and Sibylle Benard, a French prostitute and German collaborator -- a woman who got by as best she could by relying on the available men -- now falling in love with a woman.The Wolf Ticket is a first novel of great skill and imagination, tautly written and powerful.