Urrea has a weakness for melodramatic imagery: a volume of Shakespeare with a bullet lodged in its pages, a G.I. But we need to be absolutely enmeshed in a character’s consciousness to witness something on the order of Buchenwald through her eyes. During the Battle of the Bulge, in January 1945, Irene and Dorothy take a bottle of Champagne to gunners operating a howitzer cannon. Like many veterans of war, Irene and Dorothy keep their memories to themselves after they return to civilian life. Even as Urrea tells the Clubmobilers’ story, he recognizes that some parts of their experience remain impossible to share with those who weren’t there.

---