Liza Mundy
Nonfiction 2023 | 449 pages
(Republished because I accidentally deleted it!)
It is a story, not fictionalized at all. We meet about 500 CIA officers, clerks, assets, secretaries, trainers, spouses, vault managers, report writers, recruiters, spies, leaders, analysts through the book. The people need their space on the page, and cannot be ignored from an historical perspective, but put all together they don’t really tell a story. The Sisterhood is a series of incidents, usually, but not always, told in historical order. The author brilliantly includes a few people who are active throughout … Heidi August, Lisa Harper, Jonna Mendez, Eloise Page… to name a few. A few decades later she began telling us more about Cindy Storer, Barbara Sude, and Gina Bennett. This keeps the sense of connection, humanity and story-line alive. These women form, name, and empower “The Sisterhood.”
I was surprised to learn that our history takes place mostly in the 1970’s and 1980’s, during the cold war and the global rise of terrorism. Our women CIA agents were not in bunkers in a Germany during WWII. Their tale is way more contemporary, and parallels the rise of feminism, as well as harassment and considerable discrimination.
On November 23, 1985, an Egyptian plane scheduled to leave from Athens for Cairo was highjacked to Libya. This plane had Palestinians, Americans, Israeli, Greeks, and Egyptians, women, men, and children. A sign of our modern times. A life changing day for one of the women we follow, Heidi August.
It was unbelievable to me that these women a actively pursued careers in International relationships, risk, spying, recruiting, being physically located in (sometimes) remote regions of the world. Their resumes would overwhelm any sophisticated organization. PhDs in intelligence, international relations , any region of the word one could name, math, photography, languages, technology, government relations, Soviet history, Vietnam, from the most prestigious universities in the U S and the world. These women did not “happen” into their careers. They pursued them with diligence, commitment, passion, fervor, intellectual capacity, communication and leaderships skills, and compassion unparalleled in the world.
A couple of chapters I could hardly put down were about the women and the research and the risks leading up to and after 9/11.
I have decided not to “recommend” this book per se. It is such a unique research study of years and years of organizational, national, and world-wide culture.. And the style … incident after incident … is so unusual, I will ask you to pick it up, peruse it, and make your own decision. What I DO acknowledge is you will close the last pages a changed person. The role of women, how they hid and how they didn’t, is astounding.
Sorry, my friend Mary, I simply did not like this book, which takes place in Holland in 1961. I found it overly sensual and overly sexual. I am not prudish, there was just such suddenness and surprise in the critical relationship, it did not resonate as true.