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A Woman of the World
Legendary photographer Kate Goodfellow, known for her beauty and invincible spirit, reflects on past adventures, love affairs, and profound accomplishments in a world dominated by men when she is left stranded in a lifeboat after a torpedo strikes their troopship during World War II.
384 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published November 2, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 17, 2021
Margaret Bourke-White might be remembered by movie goers as the character played by Candice Bergen in Gandhi. She was a pioneering and daring photographer and photojournalist from the 1920s through the 1950s. Her images of Buchenwald awakened America to the atrocity of Nazi concentration camps. She was a long-time photojournalist for Life magazine.
A Woman of the World, by Genie Chipps Henderson (Berkley Books, 2004) is a novel whose characters and settings are drawn from the life of Bourke-White. Kate is the willful, resolute photographer whose passion carriers her to places once reserved only for men, and whose pictures adorned the pages of The World magazine, the fictional version of Life.
In 1942 Kate finally gets permission to go to Europe and cover the war, but her ship is torpedoed and the lifeboat she boards is lost and all aboard are presumed dead. While she is floating on Atlantic currents and suffering from hunger and thirst, Kate reflects on past assignments, the love of her life, and roads not taken. When she is rescued many days later, she must make a life-changing decision.
This was a flowing, captivating book with complex characters and settings so vividly written that I could smell the magnolia blossoms, feel the exhilaration, and hear the factories. It was hard to lay this one down and tend to my chores, so I gave up on the latter and escaped into the moment.
A Woman of the World, by Genie Chipps Henderson (Berkley Books, 2004) is a novel whose characters and settings are drawn from the life of Bourke-White. Kate is the willful, resolute photographer whose passion carriers her to places once reserved only for men, and whose pictures adorned the pages of The World magazine, the fictional version of Life.
In 1942 Kate finally gets permission to go to Europe and cover the war, but her ship is torpedoed and the lifeboat she boards is lost and all aboard are presumed dead. While she is floating on Atlantic currents and suffering from hunger and thirst, Kate reflects on past assignments, the love of her life, and roads not taken. When she is rescued many days later, she must make a life-changing decision.
This was a flowing, captivating book with complex characters and settings so vividly written that I could smell the magnolia blossoms, feel the exhilaration, and hear the factories. It was hard to lay this one down and tend to my chores, so I gave up on the latter and escaped into the moment.
December 17, 2016
A pretty good read. Based on the life of Margaret Bourke-White, who is SO interesting. She was a pioneer in women's photo journalism. She was a war correspondent when women definitely weren't supposed to be war correspondents. As it is based on her life, there is also a thread of a romance novel that runs through it and some romanticizing of her life, which perhaps makes the story flow, but I found I was more taken with the exciting stories of where she went and what she photographed. The romance part was just fluff. Quite readable, though, and definitely some moments where you can't put it down, because you just want to see "where that crazy girl is going to go or what she's going to do next".
January 28, 2014
Ugh. A truly amazing book. I became practically obsessed with reading it, and legitimately cried when I finished it; not even because the ending, but rather because of IT ending. I would recommend anyone to read it!
January 24, 2008
Strong woman! Great woman! (The author is my mother - who also fits this description).
January 10, 2009
This is a fun and easy read. I really enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone looking for an entertaining book.
June 4, 2012
I really wanted to like this book. It looked like an exciting fun read, but it felt too romancey and Danielle Steel like for me to really enjoy. On to the next book!
August 6, 2015
A vintage-style romance and a heroine with a spine. You could definitely do worse.
August 13, 2011
A fantastic book about a woman photojouralist in WWII.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews