By Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com
Like many Western Massachusetts natives, author Lynda Cohen Loigman knew that Springfield had once had an active Armory on the hill overlooking the city.
But she didn’t fully understand the role that facility played in the history of Springfield – or our country 
– until she began researching her latest novel, “The Wartime Sisters.”
“It makes me sad that no one knows about [the Armory],” Loigman told Prime when we reached out to her about the book, and her upcoming
author talk at the Springfield Jewish Community Center on Feb. 26. “I grew up in Longmeadow and I can’t believe we never had a field trip there.”
Following on the heels of her debut novel, “The Two-Family House” – which was named “one of the most Buzzed about books of 2016” by Buzzfeed – “The Wartime Sisters” paints a picture of “sisterhood, sacrifices and identity set against the backdrop of Brooklyn in the 1930s and the Springfield Armory during WWII,” according to press material released with the book.
More than just a backdrop
When Loigman, who now lives in Westchester, New York, with her husband and two children, first set out to weave her tale of two sisters, she said she thought of the Armory as simply a plot device – just one of several settings for her tale of two women struggling with family bonds, socio-economic class differences, and how childhood roles can sometimes haunt us into adult life.
Then she started doing some background research, including a one-day, in-person visit to the Armory grounds, now the site of Springfield Technical Community College (STCC), the Armory National Historic site and the STCC Technology Park.
“This [book] started out as one thing and then I discovered the Armory and it went in a different direction,” Loigman explained.
In her original plan, the Armory was going to be mentioned in a paragraph or two. But her tour of the physical layout of the facility with Armory Museum Curator Alex McKenzie changed her mind.
“[I was exploring what happens] when siblings are in different classes – that was kind of important to me,” Loigman said. “After I visited the Armory [and] the Armory had these two sides that were very distinct to me – Armory Square where all the homes were and the gardens and it looked like a park – and the other side, which was where all the factories were. When I visited and walked through [it], it helped me come up with my two characters [sisters Millie and Ruth]. One was of one world, and one was of the other.”
In Loigman’s novel the older sister, Ruth, is a bookish plain-Jane girl who, after numerous failed blind dates, meets and marries a like-minded budding engineer. Millie, her younger sister, is a beauty who attracts suitors easily. The apple of her mother’s eye – and the one she has big plans for – Millie ends up married not to the rich man her mother dreams of, but a questionable guy with shifting prospects after twin tragedies befall her and her family.
As World War II unfolds, both sisters – originally from Brooklyn – find themselves part of life at the Armory; Ruth as the wife of a respected engineer, Millie as what appears to be a war widow with a young son to support and no one to turn to but her estranged sister.
Armory stories shaped her narrative
Not only did Loigman find the physical layout of the Armory an inspiration for her plot, so too, were many of the stories of the men and women who lived and worked there during the war.
“When I first thought about the Armory as the character’s backstory, it was just going to be a paragraph, then I listened to the interviews – they’re on the website …. It was like a cast of characters
“The book] was going to be so much richer if I set it at the Armory and took advantage of all the stories I had heard,” she said.
For example, Loigman explained that “One of the first [interviews] I listened to was a single mother, she was about 16 or 18 when she started working at the Armory and she was working putting together triggers. When she said that was what she was doing it was such an interesting visual, women sitting together doing this job.”
Subsequently, in her book, Loigman has Millie qualify for the job of trigger assembly when she arrives at the Armory and Ruth presses her to find work quickly.
Beyond the taped interviews, Loigman said she also read some of the Armory newsletters of the time, which were put together by employees for and about life at the Armory during the wartime ramp-up – as well as articles and advertising in the city’s newspaper, The Republican, from that time period.
“They’re like gossip, they had these funny little entries that made them so human, I could really picture everyone,” Loigman said of the Armory newsletters. “I had my sisters and I wanted them [at the Armory], and I came up with these other characters that are so important to my story, the Lillian character and the Arietta character.”
The Lillian character – wife of the Armory’s commanding officer in the book – is a pivotal figure in both Ruth and Millie’s narrative. Loigman said she was inspired both by a private tour of the commandant’s home on the Armory grounds during her visit, and by a story from one commanding officer’s wife that is archived on the website.
The Arietta character – an important ally in Millie’s story – was all of her making.
“The character of Arietta came from reading a line in a book about an opera singer who worked in at the cafeteria at the Armory,” Loigman shared. Combining this with the information she learned about the many theaters that existed in Springfield during World War II, Loigman said she was “trying to come up with a character that was a vaudeville singer because her father worked for Lowe’s Poli [which was one of the theaters at the time].
Of the other “people” she met through interviews, and the picture of life in the city – with movies at 9 a.m. and dances at midnight because the Armory ran three shifts around the clock – that she gleaned through her research, Loigman said, “It was a really fascinating time to be in Springfield, and we do forget that.”
A story with layers
Unlike her straightforward first novel, “The Two-Family House,” which the former trust and estates lawyer said she’d had in her head for “15 years” and began writing – a five-year process that started with adult writing courses at nearby Sarah Lawrence College the year she turned 40, – “The Wartime Sisters” took her about two years to complete. Without a sister of her own – Loigman has only a brother – she said she drew on childhood observations of the interactions between her mother and aunts to help her craft her two sisters.
Though the book took less time than her debut novel, Loigman said “The Wartime Sisters” was “very layered. I wrote it and then wrote on top of it” before her tale of two warring sisters was complete.
“When I say it took two years, a good amount of the time [was] thinking about the characters,” Loigman shared. “It’s really important to sit with the characters, develop their back story and make them three-dimensional and make them real people.”
She said part of that “sitting” with the characters included listening to 1940s music on Sirius XM radio while in her car.
“I listened to that radio station and drove around thinking about the characters at least an hour a day,” she said. “That was a lot of good thinking time for me and a way to get to know the characters.”
The music became so important to her character development, Loigman said she include snatches of many lyrics in her book.
“When I wrote the first draft I put in a lot more songs, some that I listened to over and over and over,” she said. “[But] I had to cut them out because it slowed down the narrative. But I could have put in a ton more songs.”
Along the way, her story also became more than just the examination of how family dynamics can shape the path of our lives, to become a larger theme of women caring for one another.
“The family themes were very much there – how do you ever escape the role you are assigned [because] every family has a myth that you follow … and what role do the parents share in creating those roles and enforcing them,” Loigman said.
But she also “wanted [Ruth and Millie] to be strong [women], …I think that was true to that era, and it is true even now, the themes are timeless.
“When I listened to the stories of those women on the [Armory] website, a lot of what they did wasn’t at all easy,” she continued. “I liked the idea of the sisterhood of people – not just the sisters you were born with, but a sisterhood of people who take care of each other.”
Her original working title became “The Armory Sisters,” but Loigman said her publisher suggested “The Wartime Sisters.”
“I liked the idea,” Loigman said. “Millie and Ruth are in a war with each other, they have their own personal war” and it is set against the backdrop of the home front during war.
Yet it is a historical fiction
Though Loigman crafted many of her characters based on Armory stories, and framed the day-to-day life based on real events, she said “The Wartime Sisters” is still at its heart, a work of fiction. That means she did play around with events at the Armory, just a bit.
‘I did switch some time around, and I explained that in the editor’s notes,” Loigman said. “Like the [Benny Goodman] concert, I set it in the early spring, but it was in the fall, and that was an important part of Armory history, and I hope people will forgive me.
“[I moved] the [field services building] fire too, but I think that’s important to the story,” she continued to explain. “It is historical fiction, and I cling to the ‘fiction’ word.”
Nonetheless, she’s very pleased with the reaction to her book so far, and how it may impact the popularity of the Armory as a historic site.
“One of the really nice things I have been happy about [is that with] early readers on GoodReads and NetGallery, there have been some comments that people want to go visit the armory now. I would love it if people would go visit the Armory and learn a little about it,” Loigman shared.
*Current Armory plans to capitalize on “The Wartime Sisters” include an on-site Book Club for the novel on Feb. 9 and 23 at 11 a.m., hosted by Park Ranger and Historic Weapons Supervisor Susan Ashman.
“In the two sessions [Susan] will talk about the book and show some photographs of some of the places I talk about in the book, and then, hopefully, some of the people from that book club will come to my talk on the 26th,” Loigman said.
An author talk on “The Wartime Sisters” with Lynda Cohen Loigman takes place Feb. 26 at 7 p.m. at the Springfield Jewish Community Center, 1160 Dickinson St., Springfield, MA. Free for JCC members, $5 general public. To register email arts@springfieldjcc.org or call 413.739.4715, ext. 308. This event is co-sponsored by the Springfield Armory National Historic Site.
* At press time, the Springfield Armory Historic Site was still closed due to the government shutdown. If the Armory reopens prior to the book clubs, please check with the facility by calling 413-734-8551 or their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SPARNHS/ to see if the program has been rescheduled.
