Good Night, Irene

Written by Luis Alberto Urrea in 2023, Good Night, Irene is a historical fiction novel that follows the experiences of Red Cross volunteers Irene Woodward and Dorothy Dunford, who operate a Clubmobile to provide coffee, doughnuts, and companionship to American troops on the front lines during World War II. Urrea researched the subject of the Clubmobile Service because his mother was one of the women who served in these trucks. The novel addresses issues of trauma and mental health in wartime and explores the female friendships of the so-called “Donut Dollies” who risked their lives to operate the Clubmobiles and boost soldiers’ morale.

This guide refers to the 2023 Little, Brown and Company print edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain graphic descriptions of violence, sexual harassment, war-related trauma, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The source material uses the outdated term “shellshock” to refer to PTSD and also contains offensive and racist language.

Plot Summary

Irene Woodward leaves her abusive fiancé behind in New York to join a department of the Red Cross called the Clubmobile Service, which consists of women who drive trucks to the front lines to serve doughnuts and coffee in an effort to boost soldiers’ morale. In training, she meets Dorothy Dunford, who joined because her family died. The Red Cross assigns Dorothy and Irene to the same truck, the Rapid City. They take a ship to England and are assigned to an Air Force base. Irene becomes romantically involved with a fighter pilot named Hans. After D-Day (when Allied forces launch a massive assault on Nazi-occupied France), Irene travels to London to help the Red Cross in the area. When German forces bomb London, Irene tries to help the victims, but Hans carries her back to her room as she starts to experience symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

When Irene returns to Dorothy, the Red Cross assigns the women to a unit in France that slowly pushes into Belgium and Germany. When the Germans attack a French town, Irene and Dorothy take cover in a house that soon collapses in an attack from a tank. The women are fortunate enough to fight their way out of the wreckage, but after the battle, they both experience symptoms of PTSD, so the Red Cross grants them a week of leave to travel to Cannes and recuperate. Hans comes to meet Irene in Cannes, and they become intimate and promise to meet each other again after the war. Following this week of recuperation, Dorothy and Irene travel to the front lines of the Battle of the Bulge. Unbeknownst to Irene, a German plane shoots down Hans’s plane, and he is killed.

Overcome with a corrosive sense of anger that originated with the death of her family and intensified upon experiencing the horrors of war firsthand, Dorothy joins a group of soldiers called the Gray Ghosts who attack groups of German soldiers at night without the knowledge of the American forces. Dorothy kills a German officer because she believes that doing so will resolve her lingering fury over her family’s deaths, but once the deed is done, she only feels guilty. Later, Irene and Dorothy attend to the morale of soldiers involved in the liberation of a concentration camp. Upon seeing the many victims of the Holocaust, Irene and Dorothy struggle with mental health issues of their own. A few days later, while they serve the soldiers, a soldier named Swede insults Irene, and Dorothy attacks him in retaliation. The next day, a group of soldiers informs Dorothy that she will face charges for attacking Swede. Dorothy tells Irene to drive her into the mountains, where she plans to meet a member of the Gray Ghosts who will help her escape the charges. Irene does not agree with this decision.

Dorothy then opens a duffel bag and reveals a baby that she rescued the night before. Dorothy tells Irene that when she was out with the Gray Ghosts, she found the baby and its dead mother, and she does not want the baby to die. Although Irene does not agree with Dorothy’s plan, she drives her friend into the mountains anyway. It is so dark that Irene does not see a bomb crater in front of her, and when she hits it, she loses control of the truck, and it flies off the side of a cliff. The fall throws Irene clear from the truck, and the vehicle explodes behind her. Irene almost dies from her injuries, but a group of soldiers takes her to a field hospital, where she recovers. Distraught over her certainty that Dorothy and the baby died in the explosion and devastated by the news that Hans is missing in action, Irene falls into a state of deep depression that lingers long after her return to her old life in the United States.

Fifty years later, Dorothy, who survived the explosion, visits the graves of her family in Indiana. Dorothy’s daughter and granddaughter are with her. She tells them that she wants to visit the grave of her best friend Irene in New York. Although Dorothy believes that Irene died in the truck explosion as well, Irene is still alive and well in her family home in New York. Upon visiting Irene’s family farm in the expectation of paying respects to Irene’s grave, Dorothy and her family are astounded to find Irene herself, and the two women share an emotional reunion, realizing that they can forgive themselves for what happened on the night of the crash. Irene invites Dorothy and her family into her house to talk about their lives, and Irene understands that she will finally have comfort and peace with her friend beside her.