The Stars Are Fire

February 27, 2017
Stuck in a loveless and uncommunicative marriage with her husband, Gene, young housewife and mother Grace Holland has resigned herself to a future of childcare and housework. It’s just after World War II, and there aren’t many other opportunities for married women in coastal Maine. But when, after a summer-long drought, a massive fire breaks out and threatens her home and community, Grace may have an unexpected chance not only to rebuild but also to rewrite her personal narrative. Shreve (Stella Bain) writes with fondness of the coastal New England landscape, and she provides plenty of vintage details to evoke postwar life. Characterizations, however, are less convincing; Gene’s cruelty to Grace seems disproportionate to its purported rationale, and the novel’s final pages feel implausible and anachronistic, even given Grace’s newfound self-reliance. Nevertheless, many readers will be buoyed by Grace’s strength and resourcefulness and will be eager to debate the ethical decisions she makes as she seizes her independence. 200,000-copy announced first printing.

A fire rages in Maine in 1947, destroying a town and the lives that Grace Holland and her family once led. Her husband does not return from fighting the flames. Grace, the mother of two, who is pregnant again, is left with nothing except the chance at a new life after her difficult marriage. Narrator Suzanne Elise Freeman performs quite nicely. If there's a quibble, it's with her rendition of a pianist whom Grace finds living in her mother-in-law's house. Freeman makes him sound like a stuffed shirt, and that, in turn, causes the developing relationship between him and Grace slightly less believable. Overall, though, Freeman and author Anita Shreve deliver the goods. There's pain, loss, hope, love, and a good narrator. What more could a listener want? G.S.D. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine