This New York Times bestselling novel tells an exhilarating World War II epic that chronicles an extraordinary young woman’s heroic frontline service in the Red Cross. “Urrea’s touch is sure, his exuberance carries you through . . . He is a generous writer, not just in his approach to his craft but in the broader sense of what he feels necessary to capture about life itself.” — Financial Times In 1943, Irene Woodward abandons an abusive fiancé in New York to enlist with the Red Cross and head to Europe. She makes fast friends in training with Dorothy Dunford, a towering Midwesterner with a ferocious wit. Together they are part of an elite group of women, nicknamed Donut Dollies, who command military vehicles called Clubmobiles at the front line, providing camaraderie and a taste of home that may be the only solace before troops head into battle.             After D-Day, these two intrepid friends join the Allied soldiers streaming into France. Their time in Europe will see them embroiled in danger, from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Buchenwald. Through her friendship with Dorothy, and a love affair with a courageous American fighter pilot named Hans, Irene learns to trust again. Her most fervent hope, which becomes more precarious by the day, is for all three of them to survive the war intact.   Taking as inspiration his mother’s own Red Cross service, Luis Alberto Urrea has delivered an overlooked story of women’s heroism in World War II. With its affecting and uplifting portrait of friendship and valor in harrowing circumstances, Good Night, Irene powerfully demonstrates yet again that Urrea’s “gifts as a storyteller are prodigious” (NPR). "In the story of the Clubmobile Corps . . . Urrea finds the historical novelist’s gold: an empty space within a well-trodden time period in which to invent a story. He wears his extensive research lightly, but his immersion in the existing documentation is clear . . . a master storyteller."― New York Times Book Review “ Good Night, Irene  paints a touching portrait of female friendship and valor in wartime.”― Time “In  Good Night, Irene , Urrea pays moving tribute to his mother and her Clubmobile comrades whose wartime service was largely forgotten because, even though they sometimes served under fire, they  merely  staffed what was called the "chow-and-charm circuit." . . . As befits a contemporary war novel,  Good Night, Irene  is morally nuanced: It doesn't turn away from scenes of random violence inflicted by our "boys" and it also acknowledges the traumas endured by many who served and survived. Maybe, in  Good Night ,  Irene,  Urrea has written yet another powerful "border story" after all: this time about the border between those who live in blessed ignorance of the worst humankind can do and those who keep that knowledge to themselves, often locked in silence.”  ― NPR "Propelled by the crackling banter of a screwball comedy, Urrea's celebration of his mother and "her forgotten sisters-in-arms" is a big-hearted gem."― People "Urrea bends a fertile bough from his own family tree in  Good Night  Irene , a sweeping novel loosely based on his mother's experiences as a plucky, rebellious Red Cross volunteer with the so-called Donut Dollies on the battlefields of WWII, and the love stories — both romantic and platonic — that followed her home."  ― Entertainment Weekly “ Good Night, Irene  is bound to become a classic of war fiction. Urrea provides a loving portrait of women asked to do the impossible. It’s a complex portrait of what happens to those tender souls who learn to don armor against daily horrors only to find themselves trapped in an emotional iron cage.”  ― Boston Globe “For soldiers mired in despair and scarred, both emotionally and physically, the sounds of these women’s American voices, the silly talent shows they sometimes led and the casual conversations they initiated lent a sense of normalcy and offered a brief respite from the surreal nightmare they were living . . . The magic of these brief encounters is captured beautifully in Good Night, Irene . . .  With each turn of the page, a feeling builds that Urrea is on his own quest, a decades-long journey to fill in the blanks of a period in his family history that his mother — struggling with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder — did not want to revisit . . . Urrea has a gift for writing heart-pounding action scenes that are also lyrical.”  ― Washington Post “Usually Urrea writes about issues of the U.S.-Mexican border, but here he’s drawing on a story that derives from his mother’s experiences during World War II . . . We’re getting a Herman Wouk-type big history, but also with a lot of twists and turns and very affecting.” ― PBS NewsHour "With cinematic verisimilitude and deep emotional understanding, Urrea opens readers’ eyes to the female Red Cross volunteers who served overseas during WWII, delivering donuts, coffee, and homestyle friendliness