Lily Baines is a Y Station Girl, based at Withernsea on the Yorkshire coast. Her job is maddingly boring – to listen for transmissions in German from ships in the North Sea. Most of what she hears is static, but occasionally she hears German sailors and officers passing information. Mostly boring, yes, but what she and all the other Y Station girls hear is fed into Bletchley Park, where codes are being cracked in the effort to defeat the Germans in World War II.
Lily happens to have an old radio transmitter, courtesy of her father. It’s illegal to possess one; she could get into serious trouble if it’s discovered. Except one night in 1943, she hears a very different kind of transmission. The voice is American; a ship is reported to be missing and they’re searching. And then comes the biggest shock of all. The transmission is coming from 2023, 80 years into the future.
Kate Quinn
She makes a connection with the owner of the voice, one Matt Jackson who works in radio transmissions about the USS Colin Powell. Eventually overcoming mutual shock at the years separating them, they come to realize that Lily may be able to help determine what happened with the missing ship – and prevent another world war.
Signal Moon is a short story by author Kate Quinn. Based on historical events (there were indeed Y Station girls who monitored German ships), it is a delightful, fast-paced story, filled with historical information about the period and completely realistic. And it’s also something of a love story, with hero and heroine separated by 80 years in time.
Quinn is the author of several novels in the historical fiction genre. She’s published four books in the Empress of Rome Saga, two in the Italian Renaissance, and four set in the 20th century. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Classical Voice from Boston University. She lives with her family in San Diego.
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