"An emotionally-charged, brilliantly realized novel set in the l930's about five American women--Gold Star Mothers--who travel to France to visit the graves of their WWI soldier sons: a pilgrimage that will change their lives in unforeseeable and indelible ways. The women meet for the first time just before their journey begins: Katie, an Irish maid from Dorchester, Massachusetts; Minnie, wife of an immigrant Russian Jewish chicken farmer; Bobbie, a wealthy Boston socialite ; Wilhelmina, a former tennis star in precarious mental health; and Cora Blake, a single mother and librarian from coastal Maine. In Paris, Cora meets a journalist whose drug habit helps him hide from his own war-time fate--facial wounds so grievous he's forced to wear a metal mask. This man will change Cora's life in wholly unexpected ways. And when the women finally travel to Verdun to visit the battlegrounds where their sons fought as well as the cemeteries where they are buried, shocking events -a death, a scandal, a secret revealed--will guarantee that Cora's life and those of her traveling companions will become inextricably intertwined, and only now will they be able to emerge from their grief and return home to their loved ones. This is a timeless story set against a footnote of history: little known but unforgettable."--
I received a copy of this novel as part of a book blog tour hosted by France Book Tours. This review in its entirety was originally posted at caffeinatedlife.net: http://www.caffeinatedlife.net/blog/2014/05/13/review-a-star-for-mrs-blake/
A Star for Mrs. Blake is a wonderful tale following a number of Gold Star Mothers, mothers who lost their sons serving their country during World War One. Cora Blake meets a number of other women from different cultural and social backgrounds as they make their way to France to visit the final resting place of their fallen sons. It was interesting to watch these women interact. It’s a little awkward at first and it’s not a perfect fix–there are disagreements and sides taken–but there are also laughs and strange experiences binding them together as well as the common grief they share of having lost their sons.
The story itself had a bit of a slow start. Cora’s small town sets the backdrop to her life before the trip that ultimately changed her life but it was pretty slow; it felt like an overload of names and people and situations. It did however pick up for me when the group finally met in New York.
A Star for Mrs. Blake overall was a great read shedding light on an interesting project funded and supported for the mothers of fallen World War One soldiers. It was an interesting and delightful fellowship that was formed amongst the women where class and background are ultimately overlooked and replaced with a solidarity for what they endured and what they experienced. Readers of historical fiction and stories set in the early twentieth century and involving World War One will want to check out this novel.
