Set in North­ern Ire­land dur­ing World War II, The Linen Queen is the sto­ry of beau­ti­ful and flir­ta­tious Sheila McGee, who works in the linen mill in her small town. She and her self­ish, mean moth­er live with a mis­er­able aunt and drunk­en uncle, and Sheila dreams of escape to Eng­land or Amer­i­ca. When she wins the local Linen Queen con­test she thinks it will change her life, but it is the bomb­ing of Belfast by the Jer­ries and the Yan­kee army’s arrival in town that rad­i­cal­ly alter life for Sheila and her fel­low towns­peo­ple. Now she must share her tiny room with a trou­bled teen, a refugee from the Blitz. A rela­tion­ship with a lone­ly Amer­i­can Jew­ish sol­dier opens up her world, and she begins to evolve into a car­ing human being. The author evokes the local Irish lin­go and land­scape beau­ti­ful­ly. Although the sto­ry is slight­ly repet­i­tive, it reveals much about how great world events affect a small, remote town. The book is suit­able for both teens and adults.