What a fascinating book - and, though it may seem odd for a historical novel, very timely. Departing from a series, this standalone sends two New Yorkers to Los Angeles to seek a new start just as the US is debating whether to join the Allies in World War II. One is Vi, a mother who is in mourning for her husband and the other Veronica, her loving daughter, who is burning to have a meaningful journalism career but has burned all her bridges by having an affair with a married man who turns out to be both a scumbag and the spouse of a vengeful woman. Without jobs or money, they move into a cottage belonging to a West Coast relative and begin to establish themselves. Veronica gets a job with a weird couple who run a newsletter that turns out to be a nest of Nazis who despise Jews and support America First, an isolationist movement that is aligned with the KKK and the German Bund. Since Veronica had reported on the notorious Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden, she recognizes immediately what she has stumbled into. But the local police and the FBI are only interested in pursuing communists. It's not until they connect with a Jewish activist who's monitoring the rise of Nazi sentiments in Southern California that they know what to do: infiltrate the organization and gather intelligence. returnreturnWhat follows is tense and well-furnished with historical material, both in terms of popular culture and daily life and the political scene in that time and place. I sometimes found the emotional responses of the characters a little unlikely for undercover agents, a bit less complicated than I would expect. I was also skeptical the two could avoid detection as easily as it seemed, such as not letting the Nazi plotters know where they lived. Vi was somewhat underutilized as a character, and I think there could have been more development of her interesting support of isolationism - that could have been a useful way of teasing out the nuances between "of course we have to fight" and full-on Nazi fandom. To be fair, it's there - I just wanted more of it, and of Vi!returnreturnIt's illuminating to read this story, based on historical facts and actual figures. We tend to forget America First is not a new concept, and it was a noxious white supremacist notion the first time around, too. We tend to think of the US as being heroic in fighting Nazis back in the day, and completely united in the struggle, and overlook the history of fascism in this country. While the author, through her characters and their actions, does make a strong case for pluralism as an American virtue, she leaves it up to readers to connect the dots to our current crisis of democracy. But the connections make the book especially compelling.returnreturnI hope it reaches a lot of readers, if only to help us see our present moment in historical context, so we don't blithely say "this is not who we are" without stopping to think.