The Blue Star

December 3, 2007
The small dramas of teenage love get caught in the crosswinds of a war in this sequel to the 2001 bestseller Jim the Boy
. It's late summer 1941, and Jim Glass, now a high school senior, has an earnest, unshakable passion for classmate Chrissie Steppe. But as straightforward as his feelings are, the circumstances of his nascent romance are complex: Chrissie's family is indebted to their landlord, whose sailor son Bucky claimed Chrissie as his girl before shipping out to serve on the USS California
at Pearl Harbor. Throughout Jim's fraught final year at school, he relies on the advice of his uncles, but after Pearl Harbor is bombed, they can't protect him from the war's toll. Questions of patriotism, sexuality and poverty weave their way into a narrative that's deceptive in its simplicity: the growing pains that Jim and his friends experience pack a startling emotional punch.

Starred review from January 15, 2008
Beautifully told, this old-fashioned love story is the kind of fiction readers have come to expect from Earley after his luminous, warmhearted first novel, "Jim the Boy". Here readers reencounter the main character of that novel and the sleepy rural community in North Carolina where he lives. Jim is now a senior in high school who finds himself on the verge of adulthood and attracted to a young woman of Cherokee descent named Chrissie Steppe. Their relationship blossoms from infatuation to love, and Earley handles this developing romance with great tenderness and emotional warmth. The novel is set during the ominous early years of World War II, and foreboding historical events infuse Jim and Chrissie's situation with considerable poignancy and pathos. Earley also brings to life a very appealing rural community, conjuring up a portrait of a bygone America where people conducted themselves with dignity and devoted themselves to simple virtues and values. Enthusiastically recommended. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 12/07.]Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2008
Earley follows up his enchanting debut, Jim the Boy (2000), with an equally charming sequel. Seven years later, in 1941 South Carolina, Jim Glass hovers on the brink of adulthood. Now a senior at Aliceville High School, he experiences all the typical pangs of adolescence. His main preoccupation is the perusal of Chrissie Steppe, his archrival Bucky Bucklaws girl, but when Bucky enlists in the navy, he takes advantage of the opportunity to woo Chrissie. After Pearl Harbor, the reality of war interrupts the predictable tenor of their small-town lives, reshaping the fates of Jim, Chrissie, Bucky, and the rest of the gang. The deceptive simplicity of the matter-of-fact narrative inexorably draws the reader into this tender and true coming-of-age tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)