Review of The Women of Camp Sobingo in July issue of Inkspotter Newsletter

Issue 5.04 Inkspotter News Page 9
July 2007


The Women of Camp Sobingo
By Marilyn Celeste Morris

Vanilla Heart Publishing, 2008
Reviewed by Betty Dobson

The Women of Camp Sobingo opens with a bang as stress over a boardroom confrontation leads successful – and otherwise strong – businesswoman Trudy Cavanaugh to physical illness.
Trudy runs a publishing company, you see, and she’s pushing the old boys’club”to make the move from traditional men’s magazines to non-traditional women’s fare.
She’s just as determined to reunite with old friends from her Army wife days in Korea 25 years earlier. But all is not happiness and light at the prospect. A strong note of sadness tinges her plans. The reunion won’t be complete. Her husband has passed away during that time, and Leah….she didn’t live long enough to leave Korea.
Leah killed herself.
With that, the prologue sets the stage for a journey into the past, first to 1946 when Trudy, en route to Korea, meets the women who will share her Army base existence.
Morris delves into the early years of each woman’s life, exploring who they are and why. She shows their childhoods, their progress towards marriage, and their ways in which they cope with living alone while waiting to join their husbands in Korea.
Most of the women have secrets in their pasts. All have their share of hardship. And their troubles don’t end when they reach Camp Sobingo.
Morris has pulled together an epic-style novel of intertwining lives. The women follow different paths for a time, but all paths lead to Camp Sobingo…and to each other. Knowing how some parts of the story will end in no way detracts from the power of the whole.