“I have spent most of my life preparing to write this book.” Luis Alberto Urrea wrote this line in a letter to readers that opens his latest novel Good Night, Irene.
If you’ve never heard of the Clubmobile Corp, an all-women volunteer program of the Red Cross, affectionately referred to as the “Donut Dollies,” we learn all about them in the novel Good Night, Irene. And what a story it is.
These volunteers, the women, had two months of training and then were sent out among the troops in two-ton trucks equipped with coffee makers and donut machines—and not a little compassion to share. But they also faced harrowing experiences out there behind the front lines.
Through his research, Luis Alberto Urrea discovers that his mother had been on the front lines—she with her truckmates.
The Donut Dollies were recognized as the foremost women in battle in World War II and were among 250 elite Clubmobile women who accompanied the troops that pushed through France and Belgium–and even Germany, after D-Day. Urrea’s mother was assigned to Patton’s Third Army and became trapped behind enemy lines in the Battle of the Bulge and was there to help liberate Buchenwald.
Urrea’s mother did not speak about her time in the Red Cross. But the author’s research and an incredible twist of fate that leads him to a 94-year-old Donut Dolly who worked with Urrea’s mother, helps him retrace the steps and write the story.
Good Night, Irene is a work of fiction, but as Urrea writes, “Sometimes the fable is the surest way to see the truth.”
And our wide-ranging interview illustrates this fact—that Luis Alberto Urrea has spent most of his life preparing to write this book.
Urrea discusses his sometimes painful childhood, his mother’s undiagnosed PTSD, how his solitude was a part of his writing life—in the same way that the support of women became the inspiration for so many of his books. Urrea’s sometimes difficult relationship with his father leads to yet another part of the story. It is an unlikely piece of the puzzle, but as you’ll hear, it makes perfect sense.
An epigraph that opens the book is from the song lyrics of “Irene” by Joan Manuel Serrat—a beloved Spanish composer and singer whose modern, popular music has been much admired by Mexicans for decades.
In the song, Serrat sings “No comprendo cómo puede usted/pasar y no verla…” or “I don’t understand how you can pass by and not see her…”
How has a story like this one not been told and retold—of the compassion, valor, and selflessness of someone like Phyllis McLaughlin de Urrea? How did even she hide it away—in a diary in a box, in the secret compartment of a hollow doorknob…or in her own “long forgetting”?
Luis Alberto Urrea helps us see—and learn from—the story.
Luis Alberto Urrea is the author of Good Night, Irene. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his landmark work of nonfiction The Devil’s Highway. He is the author of numerous works, including The Hummingbird’s Daughter, The House of Broken Angels–a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Good Night, Irene is published by Little, Brown.
