From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Suberman's first autobiographical work, The Jew Store (Algonquin, 1999), offered readers a portrait of life in the semirural South of her childhood. The story here takes up with her coming-of-age in Florida and her home-front experiences during World War II. The author's Jewish identity didn't mean much to her when she first met her future husband, Jack Suberman, in college. Although he was not religious, he thought deeply and spoke cogently to her about the fact of their Jewishness-what it meant to their peers, what Jim Crow should mean to Jews, and how to reconsider her own prejudices. Marriage and military service happened almost simultaneously for the young couple. Stella traveled to the West to be with Jack as he trained to be a fighter pilot. They had a son. Jack, like some of their friends before him, shipped out to war. Suberman brings a strong and steady voice to this combination memory and unflinching self-analysis. Reflective teens will learn much about human nature's openness to change and moral growth, without feeling themselves confronted by anything akin to preaching. The author's excellent expository style serves as a model, too, for those wanting to create deeper nonfiction collections for high school students.Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
In the sequel to The Jew Store (1998), Suberman carries her autobiography through World War II and marriage to Jack Suberman, her husband for 60 years. They met in Florida, and he exposed her to views on Jewish identity and the race issue that were wholly new to her. More shocks came when war broke out and Jack went into the air force. Following him from base to base, she had to cope with overt anti-Semitism. There were also pregnancy and childbirth, fellow service wives, weird military regulations, and wartime shortages to deal with. Finally, Jack went to fly in B-29s in the China-Burma-India theater, and the emotional impact of Stella's long, rumor-haunted waits for his returns is the greatest the book delivers. Suberman's account of the "Greatest Generation" experience from the viewpoint of those who had to sit it out on the home front will probably be as widely hailed as was The Jew Store. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
When Stella Suberman wrote her first memoir, The Jew Store, at the age of seventy-six, she was widely praised for shedding light on a forgotten piece of American history--Jewish life in the rural South. In her new memoir, Suberman reveals yet another overlooked aspect of America's past--the domestic side of war.

Her story begins in the Miami Beach she grew up in, when hotel signs boasted "Always a View, Never a Jew" and where a passenger ship lingered just off shore carrying hundreds of European Jews hoping for--but never finding--sanctuary. It was a time of innocence, before that war in Europe became our war.

Stella was nineteen when America entered the fighting. By the time she was twenty-three, the war was over. She married Jack Suberman the week he enlisted and set out alone to join him in California. She was kicked off trains to make room for soldiers, her luggage was stolen, she was arrested for soliciting, but she was determined to follow her husband. And she did so for the next four years as he was sent from air base to air base, first training to be a bombardier and then training others. It wasn't until he was sent overseas to fly combat missions that she finally went back home to wait, as did so many other soldier's wives.

This remarkable memoir renders a double understanding of war--of how it matured a young woman and how it matured a country. By personalizing the patriotism of the 1940s, Stella Suberman's story becomes the story of all military wives and serves as a powerful reminder of how differently many Americans feel about war sixty years later.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When It Was Our War is a personal story that brings a new perspective to "the greatest generation" by giving voice to the military wives on America's home front during World War II.

Still a teenager when America declared war on Germany and Japan, Stella Suberman, not hesitating for even a moment, bought a blue Vera Maxwell suit and a leghorn hat made of fine straw, found a rabbi, and married Jack a week after he joined the Army Air Corps. By the time the war ended in 1945, Stella was twenty-three, and very much an adult. Now eighty, she tells her story - the story of a young woman who, like so many others, watched her husband go off to war overseas, not knowing if she would ever see him again and waiting for what seemed an eternity for his letters home.

In this frank, insightful record of those war years, Suberman takes us back to the Miami Beach of her high school days when hotel signs boasted Always A View, Never A Jew. She recalls the passenger ship lingering just off Miami Beach, a boat full of European Jews hoping for sanctuary and later known as the Voyage of the Damned. She describes setting forth alone across the country to join Jack at his training camp in California. Kicked off trains to make room for soldiers, her luggage stolen, arrested for "soliciting," she was determined to follow her husband. Stella discovered she could take on and handle hard things: the anti-Semitism she encountered almost everywhere, the gradual recognition of her own prejudice, and even having her first baby far from home. Meanwhile, she took Jack's buddies into her heart, and when some were lost in battle, she grieved, but went on.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

This warm, simple yet artful look at her life as an army officer's wife during WWII, a sequel to Suberman's memoir, The Jew Store, is the story of a young woman-typical of so many-"who got caught up in a whirlwind and, while she was finding her way about in it, did a lot of growing up." Now 80, Suberman brings a sense of immediacy, tension and even a surprise ending (that will catch your heart) to events that took place more than half a century ago. Before being sent off to battle, Suberman's husband was stationed in California, Arizona and Kansas, and with a novelist's gift for detail and pacing, the author introduces the characters who moved in and out of her life in these locations, among them the anti-Semitic Mrs. Gillis, who inspected young Stella for the "lump" she'd been assured existed on the backs of Jews everywhere; Jerry Bulla, a Mexican-born cadet who passed himself off as Hawaiian to avoid discrimination; and Mrs. Womble, the Subermans' Kansas landlady, who spent her afternoons playing strip poker with the neighborhood ladies. Suberman's narrative retains a calm, even tone, even when her luggage is stolen and she's nearly arrested by a cop who mistakes her for a hooker when he finds her sleeping on a train station bench. And she is equally matter-of-fact about the undercurrent of racism and anti-Semitism that flows through her narrative, showing, without sanctimony, how she eventually confronted her own prejudices and challenged others to confront theirs. (Sept. 26) Forecast: With the recent nostalgia for WWII, this lovely account of wartime on the home front should have broad appeal, which will be helped by a 10-city author tour. This could be a sleeper. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

As a sheltered teenager in Miami Beach's Jewish community, Suberman (The Jew Store) paid little notice when World War II began. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, the conflict would consume her attention: her boyfriend, Jack, joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, and the two sweethearts soon married. Finding herself a military wife during wartime brought challenge and adventure, which Suberman recalls with enthusiasm and emotional honesty. Her story chronicles not only her homefront sacrifices but also marks her own maturation from na vet to social awareness as Jack was shipped around the country for training. Once Jack was abroad, the couple's correspondence kept their young marriage strong and blended their perspectives so much that Suberman's writing often recounts Jack's overseas experiences as if she had actually been there. She captures the mixed atmosphere of excitement and anxiety as the country braced itself "for the duration." Although an honest and well-written account, this work is similar to the scores of other personal memoirs of the era. Not a necessary purchase but suitable for public libraries.-Elizabeth Morris, formerly of Otsego Dist. P.L., MI Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Suberman's first autobiographical work, The Jew Store (Algonquin, 1999), offered readers a portrait of life in the semirural South of her childhood. The story here takes up with her coming-of-age in Florida and her home-front experiences during World War II. The author's Jewish identity didn't mean much to her when she first met her future husband, Jack Suberman, in college. Although he was not religious, he thought deeply and spoke cogently to her about the fact of their Jewishness-what it meant to their peers, what Jim Crow should mean to Jews, and how to reconsider her own prejudices. Marriage and military service happened almost simultaneously for the young couple. Stella traveled to the West to be with Jack as he trained to be a fighter pilot. They had a son. Jack, like some of their friends before him, shipped out to war. Suberman brings a strong and steady voice to this combination memory and unflinching self-analysis. Reflective teens will learn much about human nature's openness to change and moral growth, without feeling themselves confronted by anything akin to preaching. The author's excellent expository style serves as a model, too, for those wanting to create deeper nonfiction collections for high school students.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews