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