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Melfort, Saskatchewan, Canada
I am a lawyer in Melfort, Saskatchewan, Canada who enjoys reading, especially mysteries. Since 2000 I have been writing personal book reviews. This blog includes my reviews, information on and interviews with authors and descriptions of mystery bookstores I have visited. I strive to review all Saskatchewan mysteries. Other Canadian mysteries are listed under the Rest of Canada. As a lawyer I am always interested in legal mysteries. I have a separate page for legal mysteries. Occasionally my reviews of legal mysteries comment on the legal reality of the mystery. You can follow the progression of my favourite authors with up to 15 reviews. Each year I select my favourites in "Bill's Best of ----". As well as current reviews I am posting reviews from 2000 to 2011. Below my most recent couple of posts are the posts of Saskatchewan mysteries I have reviewed alphabetically by author. If you only want a sentence or two description of the book and my recommendation when deciding whether to read the book look at the bold portion of the review. If you would like to email me the link to my email is on the profile page.

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Bird’s Eye View by Elinor Florence

Bird’s Eye View by Elinor Florence - Rose Jolliffe is a bright eager Saskatchewan farm girl working at The Touchwood Times as World War II begins. She is the daughter of an English war bride from World War I who maried the son born to an Orkney emigrant and a Plains Cree. And Rose is ready to leave the farm, the town, the province, the country.


Her bedroom on the farm of the late 1930’s reminds me of the bedroom I shared with my sister on the farm 20 years later:


I awoke to the familiar rustling of poplar leaves. My bedroom lacked the view of brilliant grain fields sweeping away to the southern horizon, but I didn’t mind. In summer I preferred the coolness and the dim light, with the sound of the trees that backed up against the north side of the old farmhouse. They always seemed to whispering secrets.


I have never had a Jock MacTavish, the cantankerous owner / publisher / editor / reporter, of the The Touchwood Times in my 42 years of writing a sports column for a Saskatchewan weekly paper but the content of the Times is familiar with half of the paper being “home print, written by clubs and sports teams and dropped through the slot in the front door”.


As the local boys enlist she longs to join them but the Canadian government will not allow women to volunteer for the military.


Touchwood, as was the case for real life several Saskatchewan towns, had a training base for English and Commonwealth airmen.


Rose falls for a Tazzie. The young Australian is a talented musician.


Two years into the war the Canadian government relents and allows women to sign up. Unwilling to be kept in Canada Rose uses her own money to travel to Halifax and is transported to England where she enlists in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.


Basic training is hellacious but Rose finds she loves to march. Soon she can easily do ten miles with precise 27 inch steps. After 6 weeks she is a Leading Aircraftwoman.


When the Air Force learns she can take and develop photos Rose, to her intense disappointment, is assigned to train as a darkroom technician rather than being posted to an actual air base. She develops photos for aerial maps.


Her intelligence gains her a promotion and entry to the unit studying aerial photos. Dedicated and diligent she becomes a skilled interpreter of the never ending flow of reconnisance photos.


She sees the war daily in the aerial photos from a perspective I had never appreciated:


The typical night photo looked like a spiderweb on a black plate. Searchlight beams criss-crossed the blackness, bomb bursts showed as blazing stars, and tracer bullets from fighter planes formed arcs. Huge balls of fire called scarecrows, sent up by the enemy to simulate exploding bombers and terrify our air crews dotted the dark sky. Anti-aircraft fire looked like straight white lines, changing to blurry zigzags when the pilots jinked wildly back and forth.


A dispiriting form of wartime romance comes her way.


As she struggles with that relationship her neighbour, Charlie Stewart from Touchwood, who is flying the big Lancaster bombers writes to Rose telling her that his bomber is called Prairie Rose.


I was caught up in the story of young Saskatchewan women and men participating in the great air battles of World War II. Joys are fleeting, sorrows frequent, fear a constant, hope never extinguished.


I became anxious about the fate of the sons and daughters of Touchwood. Which would survive the war and which would not come home. There was a startling credible twist at the end followed by a further twist that was not needed. 


Florence captures the spirit and strong sense of community that has defined rural Saskatchewan for over 100 years. It is my favourite book involving rural Saskatchewan since reading Cool Water by Dianne Warren.


Rose is a woman I admired. She devoted herself to her duties using her clever and imaginative mind. She contributed to the success of the Allies. There is a wonderful mini-series to be made about the “interpreters” of the millions of aerial photos. I thought of The Bletchley Circle, the series about the women who were an integral part of the decoding efforts at Bletchley Park.


I loved Bird’s Eye View.

10 comments:

  1. This sounds like such an interesting look at the times, Bill. And Rose sounds like a well-developed main character that one can really support. I like the look at life in Saskatchewan, too. I can see why you liked this so much; I'm sure it must have resonated with you.

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    1. margot: Thanks for the comment. Sometimes a character becomes special for a reader. Rose touched me deeply.

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  2. Thank you so much for this lovely review! My novel is in many ways a tribute to the fine people who live in Saskatchewan, and its heartbreakingly beautiful landscape. For more information about me and the research behind my novel, please visit my website at www.elinorflorence.com.

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    1. Elinor: Thanks for the comment. Your book does deeply connect with Saskatchewan.

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  3. I read this book when it first came out, and enjoyed it immensely. A wonderful evocation (I assume--I wasn't there:^)) of the times & places.

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    1. Susan D.: Thanks for the comment. Your use of evocation is apt for describing Bird's Eye View.

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  4. Interesting. I love reading about women who accomplish something, but not about war.
    I think of the women at the Bletchley Circle as I watched the TV episodes, which was excellent. The women in that program were all brilliant at their work, but after the war their talents and intelligence went unused, which was a shame.
    A book came out around the time mentioning that thousands of women worked there and never got recognition.

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    1. Kathy D.: Thanks for the comment. Too few of the women who enlisted had their skills utilized after the war. I do acknowledge many were happy with returning home and taking up life as wives and mothers.

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  5. Both of Ms. Florence's books sound fascinating and I will look for them. I am particularly interested in women's war work. I also loved the TV show about 15 years ago, Homefront, which showed the displacement of women at home when the men returned.

    I just read my first book set in Saskatchewan but not my last (there was no mystery in it, however).

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    1. CLM: Thanks for the comment. Welcome to reading in Saskatchewan. I think you will enjoy reading Elinor's books if you get a chance.

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