Gone to Soldiers was published by Summit Books in 1987, a 700-page novel that follows ten characters through the entirety of World War II — from Pearl Harbor to V-J Day. The title comes from a traditional song (“Where have all the flowers gone… gone to soldiers every one”), and the novel’s scope is deliberately epic: Piercy set out to write the feminist War and Peace, a total novel of the conflict that centers women’s experiences alongside men’s.
The ten narratives include: Louise, a popular novelist recruited into propaganda work; Jacqueline, a French Jewish teenager drawn into the Resistance; Ruthie, a factory worker on the Detroit home front; Bernice, a WASP pilot ferrying planes; Naomi, a child refugee hidden from the Nazis; Daniel, an intelligence analyst in the Pacific; Jeff, a bomber pilot; Abra, a Navy cryptanalyst; Murray, a war correspondent; and Ari, a Palestinian Jewish fighter.
The novel’s feminist argument is structural rather than polemical: by placing women’s war stories alongside men’s without hierarchy or subordination, Piercy demonstrates that the war was not fought only in combat but in factories, kitchens, classrooms, resistance networks, and concentration camps — and that women’s contributions were not merely supportive but constitutive of the war’s outcome.
The Jacqueline/Naomi strand — following Jewish sisters through occupied France, one into the Resistance and the other into hiding — is the novel’s emotional center and its most devastating section.
Collecting Gone to Soldiers
First edition (Summit Books, New York, 1987): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $15–$40
- Signed first edition: $30–$80
- Without jacket: $5–$10