Alice tirelessly works her way up to be a #1 tennis champion, all while maintaining a growing career trajectory editing the Wonder Women in History comic. She enjoys her hard-earned success with her loving husband, her steadfast coach, and her dear friends—many of whom are famous and well-connected.
But then her world falls apart.
Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free audiobook was provided for an honest review.
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| January 2025; Harper Muse; 9781400246762 audio (9h 24m), ebook, print; biographical fiction |
I love biographical fiction, and I love how many of them are featuring women in history. I'm not a tennis fan so I did not know who Alice Marble was. With the title and timeframe, I thought she was going to be similar to the stories about women in the resistance written by Ariel Lawhon and Erika Robuck. As this book is every bit as well-written as the books by those women, Marble had less to do with the war.
Walsh focused mostly on Marble's tennis career which began during the Great Depression. Sports were so different back then. She had no coach and played on public courts yet she would play in tournaments and the tennis association even sent her to national competitions.
The story is split between the beginning of her career in the 1930s and the war years. As I was listening to the audiobook, it usually took me a sentence or two to figure out which time period we were in. The narrator, Gail Shalan, does have a slightly younger sounding voice for the younger Alice Marble so it was more difficult as the the past caught up with the present (the war years). Shalan has narrated a lot of books but this is my first audiobook with her as the reader. She really brought the story to life and I hope I get to listen to more books with her as narrator.
Like a lot of people who lived in the 1930s and 1940s, Alice had an interesting life and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing this time period (which is a favorite of mine) through the eyes of a female athlete.
Also, be sure to read/listen to the author's note about her sources. She relied heavily on Marble's memoir and I thought Walsh's observations were interesting.
You don't have to be a sports fan to enjoy this book. If you want to learn about a tough woman living during a tough time, then this is the book for you. This would also be a great book to read for Women's History Month.
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