The Blue Star

In Tony Earley's earlier novel, JIM THE BOY, Jim Glass is 10 years old in Aliceville, North Carolina, during the Depression. In this novel, the world teeters on the brink of WWII, and Jim, a senior in high school, is in the throes of his first love. Alas, the object of Jim's affections, Chrissie, belongs to someone else. Earley offers a simple tale filled with pre-WWII optimism and sage counsel: "Being in love is like getting run over. Sometimes it kills you, and sometimes it don't." Narrator Kirby Heyborne manages to keep things nostalgic rather than ironic, bittersweet rather than sentimental. Heyborne's youthful voice convinces, as Jim learns difficult lessons. Listeners of all ages will enjoy a brief respite with decent folks, in a sweeter, gentler time. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

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.