They were unladylike rebels, three young women abandoning rolling pins for baseball bats to join the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. They changed history and that changed them. After the league folds in 1954 Nola, Fran, and Evie meet by chance on a popcorn-scented summer day where it all began…Wrigley Field, Chicago. They team up once again to fight for a pivotal cause these dames can only win by uniting as one.
Inside these ball players lies a fierce beauty, an unconventional destiny beyond the kitchen. Foregoing the American dream of sparkling cars and pastel suburbia, together they face up to the reality of nuclear drills and civil rights. Their story is uncovered nearly forty years later when Jacks Demonte discovers a trail of clues tucked away in a vintage handbag. The extraordinary lives of these women intersect with Demonte’s as she falls deeper into a heroic past.
In modern-day Chicago, a woman named Jacks discovers a vintage handbag and is transported back to the middle of the 20th century, when three young women—Nola, Fran, and Evie—find opportunity and sisterhood in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Nola Fran Evie is a rather sweet and old-fashioned story of female empowerment.” – The BookLife Prize in Fiction
“Britt Skrabanek has written an entertaining and illuminating historical novel in Nola Fran Evie. From wartime challenges, to racism and sexism, to challenges faced by today’s career women, many historical realities are presented through the life experiences of four women. Both engaging and informative, this story is a true delight!” – Readers’ Favorite
“We follow three young women playing professional baseball together in the 1940s, full of hope and joie de vivre. Inevitably the good times end and the women go their separate ways into the real world of 1950s America. Life changes them. Love is won and lost.” Read the full review >>
“I enjoyed ‘A League of Their Own’ so I expected something similar, but this story was much more. Women in the 40’s and 50’s were not supposed to be independent, willful, and athletic. Nola, Fran, and Evie were all those things—and at the same time women who touched me in a surprising way. I would love to know each of them.”
“Against the backdrop of racially charged Chicago, Nola, Fran, and Evie’s stories play out as unpredictably as a baseball game. The reader is swept up in the fever of friendship, passion, self-preservation, human rights, and, of course, baseball. Skrabanek scores with this book.”
Britt Skrabanek 