Books Set in the United States: Maine

The Stars are Fire, by Anita Shreve (2017)

For 2 weeks in October 1947, a horrible fire swept through the Maine coast.  The fire consumed nearly 250,000 acres of forest and totally destroyed nine towns, leaving thousands of people homeless.  This is the backdrop of Anita Shreve’s novel, The Stars are Fire.

Grace Holland is a young wife and stay-at-home mother of two small children.  She lives in a small coastal town on the coast of Maine.  Her husband is very controlling, and his mother despises her.  Grace’s social life consists of her children, her mother and her friend and neighbor, Rosie.  She is pregnant with her third child when the fire comes.

Her husband, Gene, joins the volunteer firefights, leaving Grace to protect their children and home.  The fire is too strong to protect the home, but Grace is able to save herself and the children by wading in the ocean.  After the fire has passed, Grace finds herself homeless until she remembers that her mother-in-law’s huge house may have been spared.  She moves in with her mother and children and awaits work of her husband’s fate.

In order to make ends meet, Grace finds a job assisting in a doctor’s office.  On her own, Grace finds that she has strength she didn’t know she had.  She begins to rebuild her life until, one fateful day, her life is again changed.  She now must face an even bigger challenge.

I have read other books by Anita Shreve, and enjoyed then.  I picked up this book because, having recently read a book about the 1917 Halifax explosion, I thought this book was a fictional account of that event.  That probably colored my reaction to this book.  The Stars are Fire takes place in Maine 30 years after the Halifax explosion.  I was well familiar with the Maine fire, having grown up in Maine and spending a lot of time in Bar Harbor, which was also badly damaged by the fire.

Read:  January 29, 2018

3 Stars

Books Set in the United States: Arizona and Oregon

Small Sacrifices: A True Story of Passion and Murder, by Ann Rule (1987)

In 1983, Elizabeth Diane Downs, who went by Diane, drove her car to the emergency room at a hospital in Oregon with her three bloodied children.  She claimed that a shaggy-haired would-be carjacker had shot her children when she stopped to offer the stranger assistance.  Seven-year-old Cheryl was dead and the other children, 8-year old Christie and 3-year old Danny, were seriously injured.  Miraculously, the two injured children survived.

Police initially searched for the carjacker, but the evidence didn't match up and soon led them to believe that Diane had shot her children.  As they probed into her background, they discovered that she had married young and had a disastrous marriage.  She had a string of affairs, and was particularly "in love" with Lew, a fellow postal worker.  Lew had indicated that he didn't want children, which may have provide the motive for Diane to eliminate her children.

The book goes into much detail about how the police and prosecutor put together their case.  The author used actual transcripts from the trial, which is riveting.

Read:  January 24, 2018

4 Stars

Books Set in North America: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism, by John U. Bacon (2017)

The Great Halifax Explosion, by John U. Bacon, recounts the events leading up to the collision of two ships in 1917 in the Halifax Harbor as well as the aftermath.  One of the ships was laden some of the most lethal explosives known.  The explosion was as powerful an explosion as a nuclear weapon, and is second only to the bombing of Hiroshima.  Over 2000 people were killed in the subsequent explosion and thousands of others were wounded, many very seriously.

The SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship was ordered by the French government to carry nearly 3000 tons of high explosives from New York City to Europe, via Nova Scotia, Canada, as a part of the World War I effort.  The ship carried almost 500 steel drums of combustible airplane fuel, 250 tons of TNT and nearly 2,500 tons of picric acid, an extremely unstable explosive.  The Mont-Blanc carefully sailed to the Halifax Harbor, successfully avoiding the German U-boats, and was to join a convoy for the remainder of the transport across the Atlantic.

The SS Imo, was a Norwegian vessel heading back across the Atlantic from Halifax Harbor.  The Imo was leaving the Harbor as the Mont-Blanc was entering.  Due to a number of factors, a serious miscalculation caused the two ships to collide on the morning of December 6, 1917.

The explosives were packed into the Mont-Blanc in such a way that the explosion did not immediately occur.  Instead, there was a fire, which caught the attention of the towns people.  Many folks looked out their windows, or wandered down to the dock to see the spectacle.  When the explosion finally occurred, it created a tsunami-like effect, causing shock waves to dissipate over much of the surrounding area, knocking down building, structures and people in its way.  The entire waterfront was virtually gone.  That which wasn’t immediately destroyed became consumed by the resulting fires.

The town folk initially assumed that the disaster was the result of a German attack since the Great War (World War I) was in full force in Europe.  In an instant, about half of the population of Halifax was homeless.  In 1917,  telephones were a luxury and the telegraph lines were destroyed.  Word of the explosion, however, reached nearby communities.  Boston, Massachusetts was the nearest large city accessible to Halifax via the Atlantic.  Despite the frosty relations between Canada and the United States (another fact I was not aware of), the acting Mayor of Halifax informed the Mayor of Boston of its need for assistance.

Boston just happened to be one of the few cities that actually had a disaster emergency plan in place.  The city immediately sent doctors, nurses, medical supplies and money to assist the people of Halifax.

The author brings several of the survivors to life.  He follows their actions in the days after the explosion in a very compassionate manner.

I just recently learned of the Halifax Explosion when listening to a history podcast.  Shortly thereafter, I happened to see The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy and Extraordinary Heroism in the public library.  I can’t believe that I never heard of the Explosion, especially since the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia has been giving my city of Boston, Massachusetts a Christmas tree as a way of “thanks” for years.

I found this book to be riveting. 

Read:  January 17, 2018

5 Stars 

Books Set in North America: San Francisco

Frog Music, by Emma Donoghue (2014)

It’s 1876 in San Francisco.  The city is plagued by a small pox epidemic and a heat wave.  Prostitution is legal, as is the farming out of unwanted babies.

Blanche Beunon is a French immigrant, burlesque dancer and “soiled dove”.  She lives with her lover and his protégé.  One day in the middle of August, Jenny, riding a high-wheeled bicycle literally runs into Blanche.  Jenny has a mysterious past.  She has, however, been arrested numerous times because of her habit of wearing pants and men’s clothing.  It is illegal in Victorian San Francisco for a woman to wear such clothing.

Blanche and Jenny form a curious friendship.  Within a month, however, Jenny has been shot and killed.  [This is not a spoiler, as the murder occurs in the first few pages of the novel.]  Blanche spends the next few days trying to bring the murderer to justice.

The novel goes back and forth in time, slowly peeling back the layers of Blanche’s life and her relationships with those around her.

The novel is based on actual historical events of the real-life murder of Jenny Bonnet who wore men’s clothing and caught frogs for a living, and Blanche Beunon.

Read:  January 14, 2018

3.5 Stars

Books Set in Europe: Austria-Hungary

Sisi: Empress On Her Own, by Allison Pataki (2016)

I picked up this book thinking that it was about the Chinese Empress Cixi.  Instead, the book was about Empress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary, known as Sisi, the wife of Emperor Frans Joseph.  The novel follows the life of Sisi from age 30 to her murder at age 60.  She felt constrained by the formality of the Hapsburg dynasty so would spend as little time in Vienna as possible.  Her husband adored him, but she felt that she was a pawn in a political marriage.

The novel describes her relationships, or lack thereof, with her children.  Her domineering mother-in-law took over the education and rearing of her oldest children, so Sisi was determined to insulate her youngest child from the rigors of court life.

The author did a lot of research in crafting this novel.  I found myself stopping often and researching to see if events described in the book really happened.  They did.

An interesting look at the Hapsburg empire in the latter part of the 1800s.

Read:  January 4, 2018

4 Stars