This book by Janis Hallowell makes for an engrossing read with a winning story line. 'She was' is essentially a novel about a student revolutionary in the 70s. Doreen Woods is a successful dentist and a family person. She has a dying brother and she would do anything to save him.

There is a past that she chose to leave behind but comes haunting back after one of her old friends from her revolutionary days recognizes her. It brings the reader back to the 60s where there were aggressive tumults following the war in Vietnam. Dorron Woods had a different identity then, she was Lucy Johansson who raged against the war and the establishment, like many other young people of her time.

Although the reason why she has changed her identity was kept under wraps, she is forced to reveal the reasons to family. The events that happened three decades earlier was forced to be narrated and Lucy Johansson, the person she was, comes alive. The story has been narrated from a twenty-first-century perspective. The novel explores the violent, determining act in a woman's life that reflects the formative disturbance and trauma of her age. 'She was' is a story about the indelible nature of the past, about going into hiding and finally the nature of making amends to something which sometimes seems improbable.

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