The Codebreaker’s Daughter tells the story of two generations of women who faced similar wars in very different ways.

When we first meet Dinah Kendall she’s a volunteer for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). She arranges to casually encounter the spies they train away from their campus, masquerading as exactly what she is – a pretty, carefree young woman. Dinah has a gift for befriending strangers, and the OSS has her testing their spies to see just how quickly she can get a man to spill his secrets. For plenty of them, in spite of months of training, a simple meal in her sunny company derails their future in espionage.

When the Colonel she works with invites her to take a position at the Morale Operations division in Washington, D.C., she jumps at the chance. It’s an opportunity to put her skills to use on a larger scale. Initially, it’s a bit boring – creating rumors aimed at undermining Axis morale isn’t quite as fun as talking to would-be secret agents – but Dinah doesn’t have a lot of career options. Her effervescent, flighty nature, so unlike her perfect, brilliant, meticulous mother’s, means there are a lot of jobs she just isn’t cut out for. Where Lillian Kendall writes her journals in code, keeps a spotless house, and never has a hair out of place, Dinah can’t decipher a crossword clue, is endlessly behind schedule, and seems to move from one mess to the next.

There are many reasons why Lillian presents such a perfect picture to the world, but she has never shared them with Dinah. She knows she should, but she just isn’t ready to be quite that vulnerable with a daughter who is so bright, lively, and different from her. Dropping Dinah off in Washington, D.C. presents a perfect chance to visit with some old friends and seek their advice on how to reconnect with her increasingly distant child.

Only once Lillian gets there, she realizes that Elizabeth and William Friedman need her help far more than she needs theirs. Both are doing important war work, business which has consumed nearly all of Elizabeth’s time and is taking a serious toll on William’s mental health. Lillian immediately takes charge of the house, cooking, cleaning, and nursing William as much as he will allow it. Having her around puts them at ease since they know they can trust her. After all, Lillian had been a key part of their code-breaking team during the last war.

Lillian and Dinah might be in the same city, but both are too caught up in their own lives to have much time for the other. Until, that is, Dinah finds herself tangled up in an unexpected snarl at the OSS. She needs Lillian’s brilliant mind to help her figure out who is working so hard to get her fired – and why.

This dual timeline, dual-narrator novel covers Lillian’s story in both WWI and WWII and shows how that impacts Dinah’s story throughout her life. I liked that the narrative shows how people can live together, experience the same things, and still not share the same perspective. Dinah and Lillian have such different personalities that they endlessly rub each other the wrong way. The book doesn’t directly address it, but there is an implication that Dinah compares herself to her mother and finds herself wanting, which then puts a strain on how she interacts with her. Dinah’s conviction that her mom must be disappointed in her, and the storyline around it, does a nice job of representing how often we get the people closest to us wrong and how a conversation might go a long way towards clearing things up.

Roger, Lillian’s husband, is more like his wife than his daughter, although he is a friendlier, more convivial version of Lillian’s sharp wits and strong moral center. He’s able to serve as a bridge between his wife and daughter because his eloquence and laid-back demeanor make him seem less threatening to Dinah. Leaving him behind when both women head to D.C. means losing the buffer they have relied on for years, which ultimately helps their relationship.

One nice aspect of the dual timeline is that we see Roger and Lillian’s romance from its formation in 1918 to its maturity in 1944. So often, we don’t get to follow our hero and heroine as their relationship goes through the ups and downs of children, family life, and the mundane happenings of the everyday, and having it on page here was delightful. I especially liked that the building blocks that led to the first blossoming of love carry them through thirty years later as they face new challenges.

The story focuses on Lillian and Dinah’s respective growth, both as individuals and in how they interact with each other. Lillian, who had a hard childhood and carried those problems into adulthood and motherhood, has always been a fixer. Her love of problem-solving is what made her an excellent codebreaker during the First World War, but it has not made her a perfect mother for adventurous, accident-prone Dinah, whose youthful exuberance often gets her into trouble.  Lillian’s response has always been to rush in with a solution, but at this point in their lives, Lillian has to learn to let go and be backup for Dinah. She also has to figure out who she wants to be and what she wants to do now that being a hands-on mom is no longer her job.

Dinah is not stupid, but her brilliance lies more in making connections and understanding human interactions than in the analytical work the other characters excel at. The threads that run through her storyline are learning to appreciate herself, step out independently, and trust her instincts. This makes Dinah’s sections read more like YA or New Adult than women’s fiction, but that actually worked well here. It was nice to see how, as a daughter learns to come into her own, a mother must learn how to let her do so.

This novel is published by Bethany House, which raises expectations of a strong Christian theology in the narrative, but the author handles this portion of her story with an extremely light touch. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being a high level of religiosity and 1 being zero mention of God, I would rank the story a 4. Roger speaks easily of his faith, Lillian is more guarded and insecure about what she believes, while Dinah is still discovering what it means to believe for oneself rather than blindly accepting what you’ve been taught. We watch all three grapple with their respective takes on God, but this plays out in the background rather than the forefront of the story.

The focus of The Codebreaker’s Daughter is on relationships. Figuring out how to be an adult daughter who, while respecting your parents, can also respect and appreciate yourself, is at the heart of the novel. It’s a quick, enjoyable read and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys women’s fiction.