The real Red Cross inspirations behind Luis Alberto Urrea’s bestseller ‘Good Night, Irene.’ Namely, his mom.

Phyllis Irene McLaughlin de Urrea, of Staten Island, died in her sleep at 74, in 1990. Soon after, her son, Luis Alberto Urrea, who lives in Naperville, teaches at the University of Illinois Chicago and has been acclaimed for years as a novelist of harrowing tales set on the Mexico border, was cleaning her home in San Diego. He was going through what she left behind when he came across a photo curled into a hollow doorknob. It showed a tall dark-haired man he didn’t recognize. He didn’t keep the photo. But years later, when a woman in Champaign who was close to his mother was showing him old black-and-whites taken during the 1940s, there was that man again. Or at least someone who looked similar. The photo had been snapped in France during World War II, Urrea’s mother is on a beach in Cannes, the man’s arm “casually over her shoulders.”

As Urrea writes in an author’s note to “Good Night, Irene,” the new bestseller based on his mother’s wartime experiences, he asked the Champaign woman, Jill Pitts Knappenberger: OK, who is this guy? Oh, replied Knappenberger, that’s Jake. And who the hell is Jake? Urrea asked. Jake was a fighter pilot. Jake was his mother’s boyfriend.

“It was a war,” she added with a smile. “We all had men.”

And so, Jake, Jill, Phyllis — they became characters in “Good Night, Irene.” Though since it’s a fictionalized account based largely on his mother’s life, Phyllis became Irene. It tells the story of the Donut Dollies, the somewhat condescending nickname given to the women who worked in American Red Cross Clubmobiles, often along the front lines. Urrea’s mother, who made doughnuts and coffee and delivered candy and mail to troops, traveled through Europe, first England, then France, landing in Normandy just after the Allies. She rode in a 2.5-ton truck with a pop-out service window and a doughnut maker. She was based in ARC Clubmobile Cheyenne. In “Good Night, Irene,” it’s the truck Rapid City.

As a young man, Urrea, now 67, knew little of this.

He grew up in Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego. His mother had been married to his father, an aide to several Mexican presidents; they met in San Francisco but separated when Urrea was young. The Phyllis who radiates happiness in photographs taken during the war was a joy, according to Knappenberger, who drove the Cheyenne. But Urrea did not know that Phyllis. He knew only a mother who nursed regrets. By the time he was born, Urrea says, “the loneliness and the repercussions of the war had overcome her, bit by bit. She was always there for vivaciousness and laughter, but a lot was buried in PTSD.”

Yet those photos ...

Urrea stopped a moment during his national tour for “Good Night, Irene” to share a few pictures and explain the scenes we’re looking at — and what old photographs don’t show. What follows were pulled from a longer conversation, edited for length and clarity:

1. “This is Mom’s official Red Cross portrait. They tried to do right by those ladies! The uniforms were blue. These were bespoke, made at a haberdashery in London. She’s 27 here and cute as a button, thinking she’s a ‘40s movie star. The first time I went to Jill’s house in Champaign — and for a long time, we had thought Jill was dead — she had this picture of my mom on her wall. They’d lost contact in 1954 but Jill kept it there. When I saw it I felt I met my true mom. She is being very romantic in her expensive handmade uniform. And she doesn’t know what she’s about to get into. Soon, reality came along.”

2. “That’s my mom on the right, and I don’t know who the woman is. I think a British Donut Dolly. The British started it in World War I, and it was Eisenhower’s idea for the Americans to do it. There were 80 trucks and 120 women in total. Here they are in a house in Glatton, England, where they were stationed before they left. It’s a pair of cobbled-together 15th century buildings. John Ford’s film crew was sharing the house with them. You know, it was like not a trace (of the Red Cross women) came out later. Jill, when we talked to her, was so mad at Stephen Ambrose, Steven Spielberg, Tom Brokaw. Of all the war stuff they wrote, filmed, reported — not even a footnote on them.”

3. “They landed at Utah Beach with Patton’s Third Army and went all through Europe, were trapped in the Siege of Brest, caught in the Battle of the Bulge. They entered Germany with Patton. I don’t know here if they’re flying to Scotland or down to Cannes for R&R. The guys there have done this many times. My mother is praying. Jill took the picture. She thought it was hilarious. Actually, only one (clubmobile volunteer) died in service. My mother was in a wreck in the Bavarian Alps. The Germans were in the process of surrendering. The truck hit a shell hole and flipped and went off the cliff. My mother’s legs were torn apart. G.I.s found her and climbed up the mountain with her.”

4. “This is one of the few pictures from inside the truck. My mom took it. She wanted to be a photographer. This is what she saw every day, many times a day. These guys were nice and polite to the Dollies but they were killing people and being killed and some of them were 22 here, but any time you see combat photos, young guys look 40. These women were often the last friendly face they saw before confronting thunder, blood, terror.”

5. “That’s my mother on the left, Jill’s in the middle and on the right, Helen Anderson, who served with them. If you look in the window of the clubmobile, there’s a ghostly male. I tell (his wife) Cindy, that’s Jake. But she says, no. I think it adds mystery. The Cheyenne was abandoned in Germany after the war. A friend sent me photos of it taken during the 1970s. It’s in a field and it’s full of hippies. Boy, Mom would have been mad.”

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com