A STAR FOR MRS. BLAKE by April Smith

February 6, 2014


I am familiar with April Smith and her Ana Grey F.B.I. thrillers, and they are excellent. A Star for Mrs. Blake is quite the departure from her series, but I think it is her finest book.

Cora Blake is a widow from a tiny island in Maine who loses her son during World War I. At sixteen, he lied about his age and joined the army, like a lot of young men did back then. Sadly, he gave his life for his country, and Mrs. Blake became a Gold Star Mother, joining the ranks of thousands of other mothers who also lost their sons to war.

The United States government inquires whether she wants his remains returned or buried where he died, and she chooses the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in France. A few years later, Congress passes legislation to fund the transportation of the Gold Star Mothers to their sons’ graves in Europe, and Mrs. Blake receives an invitation. Several thousand Gold Star Mothers made the journey, and this beautifully written novel is about this little known slice of history set during the Depression.

Smith makes it personal by creating a small group of women and telling their stories. They travel first class with an army officer as chaperone, and a nurse, both of whom have interesting back stories. The group also includes a Boston society woman, heir to a railroad fortune, poor Jewish and Irish immigrants, and a woman who, they are warned, is a recent release from an insane asylum. This group quickly becomes a rather dysfunctional family, helping each other, fighting with each other, but at heart always knowing that they share a terrible loss.

Part history lesson, part travelogue, but fully wonderful, Smith says she’s been wanting to write this story for twenty-five years, and I’m really glad she finally got her way. Despite the seriousness of the subject, there is some humor and the book never becomes maudlin. The characters move the story along, and it is a fast read. Book groups especially will love this. If you liked The Postmistress by Sarah Blake or Losing Julia by Jonathan Hull, you will probably like this one too – and if you haven’t read either of those, do yourself a favor and add them to your to-be-read list.

I had never heard of Gold Star Mothers group, but they are still active. Loss is, of course, no longer limited to just sons; those who have lost daughters are also eligible. For more information on Gold Star Mothers, please visit www.goldstarmoms.com

02/14 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

A STAR FOR MRS. BLAKE  by April Smith.  Knopf (January 14, 2014). ISBN 978-0307958846. 352p.

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Posted by Stacy Alesi

HOUSE OF JAGUAR by Mike Bond

January 29, 2014

Mike Bond has an adventure filled background as a reporter, novelist, and international energy expert working in many dangerous and remote war-torn parts of the world.

House of Jaguar is set in the jungles of Guatemala amidst fighting between natives, the Guatemalan army, and the  unpublicized  presence of the CIA.  Joe Murphy a veteran of Vietnam is smuggling a planeload of Marijuana into Guatemala when he witnesses an attack and massacre of a native village by the army and it’s CIA advisors. He is badly wounded in the fighting, but escapes and treks through the jungle.

Joe ends up in the care of Dona Villalobos, a guerilla doctor ministering to her people. They fall in love surrounded by the horrors of the civil war and attempt to get out the truth out about what is really happening in the country.

Bond shows his readers the reality of the war, and paints the truth about unpublicized intervention by the U.S. in Central America.  Mike in real life is only one of more than 100 correspondents left alive during the action. Tightly woven and a truly engrossing story of an unpublicized conflict in a land very close to the U.S.
1/14 Paul Lane

HOUSE OF JAGUAR by Mike Bond. Mandevilla Press (November 25, 2013). ISBN 978-1627040105. 387p

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Posted by Stacy Alesi

AN OFFICER AND A SPY by Robert Harris

January 20, 2014

Robert Harris takes us to France during the late 19th century and as he does in his other historically centered novels, brings the era to life as background for this novel.  The French army has suffered a major defeat in just six weeks against the Germans during the war of 1870.  The country has lost the twin provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, seized by Germany as war reparations and the country is smarting from the defeat.

Alfred Dreyfus is a captain of artillery in the French army, Jewish, and originating in Alsace. In 1894,  after the discovery of a traitor in the ranks of the army selling secrets to Germany, a group of officers in the army convicted Dreyfus of the crime. This was based on very flimsy evidence not revealed to his lawyer, and had him sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, a French possession off the coast of South America.

Among the officers convicting him is Georges Picquart, an intellectual and a soldier loyal to France. After the trial  Picquart is promoted to head up the newly formed French counter-intelligence agency and, among other duties, is to maintain the ongoing file on Dreyfus.  While Picquart was originally convinced of Dreyfus’s guilt, some evidence surfaces which points in another direction.
In order to bring emotions to the story, it is told in first person using Picquart as the narrator. When he discovers evidence conflicting with that presented by Dreyfus’s prosecutor, his honor demands that he systematically begin to investigate it, although his career begins to suffer along the way when superior officers demand that he drop the matter.

Harris incorporates real people involved in the affair, including several Generals that apparently colluded to prevent the truth coming out.  The author Emile Zola is mentioned, and it was his article “I Accuse,” printed in the newspaper that helped to finally pardon, and later exonerate Dreyfus in real life. The period was rife with antisemitism, and Harris accuses this factor as being an important feature in the original finding Dreyfus guilty and subsequent attempts to free him.

A must read, and a commanding one.

1/14 Paul Lane

AN OFFICER AND A SPY by Robert Harris. Knopf (January 28, 2014). ISBN 978-0385349581. 448p

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Posted by Stacy Alesi

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