A Star for Mrs. Blake Paperback – September 23, 2014

This book gives the reader a look into the lives of women who lost their sons in WWI. This perspective was new to me, particularly the overseas tours that were conducted during the height of the depression. Anyone who is a student of history will find this book an interesting and easy read. I wish that the author had included a few press pictures of the mothers boarding their ships and so on. The information provided on the men referred to as "tin noses" was fascinating. As an amateur genealogist I have dealt with a fair amount of WWI military information. I was already aware of the attempts made to assimilate men who had suffered severe facial deformities from the war back into normal society. The details that this book provides gave me a better understanding of the process and perils involved. Overall a decent book.

In the early years of the great depression, during the Hoover Administration, thousands of mothers of American soldiers, who died and were buried in France during World War I , traveled there to visit their sons' graves in a program sponsored by the United States government and administered by the army. This novel focuses on a fictional mother, Cora Blake, a librarian in Maine, who has to moonlight in a fish cannery to make ends meet.
While the pilgrimage serves as the container for the characters, the real story is about them, how different the mothers are in race, religion and economic status, and having only one thing in common, the loss of their sons in a horrible war. Other characters come into play as well, from then current military to disabled and disfigured veterans. Much goes on near the ending which I cannot discuss here other than to say there is more trauma, but also some repair. There is a lot for readers to absorb.

"A Star for Mrs. Blake" begins well, continues well in the middle, and finishes well--this is deft storytelling that April Smith has honed in her Ana Grey mystery thriller series and in her writing for television. Any reader can be grateful to be in such confident authorial company. Yet, clearly, this book goes beyond its sureness of craft: it's the product of Smith's passion for her subject over many years of research and thought about the real people making the Gold Star Mothers pilgrimages to the American cemeteries in France in the early 1930s. The characters she has created are fictional, but fashioned from genuine historical detail, which is meaningfully applied throughout. Because this novel is shaped by the course of a very special pilgrimage, it makes sense to talk about it in terms of the sequence of stages through which anyone on pilgrimage will likely pass. I'm adopting the stages mapped out by Phil Cousineau in his book "The Art of Pilgrimage," which in turn draws on the "hero's journey" made famous in the writings of Joseph Campbell.

First, there is the Longing; for mothers whose sons had died in the First World War and were buried overseas, the longing was persistent and palpable. The first such mother we meet in the novel is Cora Blake, a librarian and single mother in Deer Isle, Maine, raising her three nieces and mourning the loss of her son Sammy who was killed in Verdun in October 1918. The hard decision many families made not to bring their children's remains home from the battlefield was a lingering wound; the longing to visit these graves was acute, yet such a trip seemed out of reach. The Call came in 1929, when the U.S. Congress passed legislation which enabled mothers to go on pilgrimage, courtesy of the government, to their sons' graves in Europe. For Cora Blake, her personal call came in February 1931 when she got a letter of invitation from the War Department. Cora learned that her fellow pilgrims would be four other mothers--all very different from each other--and together they would make up "Party A"; they began to exchange letters and prepare for the momentous Departure in June. This part of the story reminded me in a way of "Enchanted April," from the novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, in which a small group of women who were strangers to each other and from diverse circumstances made the decision to take a trip to Italy together. The Gold Star Mothers in Party A were on a very different sort of journey, yet it shared some of the same elements of adventure and assertion of personal independence.

Party A all had to assemble at their hotel in New York City before boarding an ocean liner bound for the port of Le Havre, France. Cora came by train from Bangor, Maine, stopping in Boston to meet another mother in her group, an Irish maid named Katie McConnell. One by one, the pilgrims arrived, were introduced, and joined the preparations for the European voyage. Smith has brought to convincing life five women with very different temperaments and histories; the incidents along their pilgrim way flow very naturally from these women's lives.

Once they arrived in France, the stops included several days in Paris, not only as tourists but, it became apparent, as goodwill ambassadors for the American military--not a role they consciously chose or endorsed. The mothers were the focus of much attention, most of it welcome and gracious, but some of it problematic and intrusive. As anticipation was building to get down to the real business of the trip, the women confronted painful questions about the war and the meaning of their sons' deaths. In terms of the hero's journey, they found themselves in the Labyrinth, which is sometimes called the Descent, the most confusing and disturbing time. The Arrival at the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery where their sons were buried brought this phase to a climax; the series of visits they made there was handled with tremendous sensitivity and insight by Smith. I was frankly in awe of the beautiful construction of the plot at this point--which I WON'T reveal! It felt like being there with the mothers and then watching the unexpected unfold.

The last stage of the hero's journey--and these pilgrim mothers do emerge as heroes--is Bringing Back the Boon, receiving the gift or gifts from the experience. These can be tangible (crucial objects, talismans, or "souvenirs") or intangible gifts (knowledge, awakening, and healing)--usually both. Again, this story stars in its unsentimental and emotionally powerful treatment of the resolution for each character. The important thing about going on pilgrimage is that whatever you could imagine ahead of time, you can never really know what it will mean to you until you go there yourself. The same is true of A Star for Mrs. Blake: only by traveling its road and reading to the end can you bring back the boon of this beautiful book.

I received an e-book in exchange for an honest review; I also bought myself a hardcover, frankly because of the beautiful cover. I'm glad now to have this copy on my shelf!

I had a vague memory from visiting Sagamore HIll ( Teddy Roosevelt's home) as a child, that he lost a son in WWI and had simply a memorial plaque in the states for him. I remember reading that he chose to leave his son's body in Europe in a battlefield cemetery to honor his sacrifice for this country.Even as a child, that left me feeling bereft for the Roosevelt's. I couldn't conceive the idea that a parent would leave their child's body in the foreign land where it was taken from them. I couldn't have been more than seven or eight, but I can recall my visceral reaction to it fifty years later. I had no idea of the 'Gold Star" parents and wanted very much to give the book a gold star review. However, after the first few chapters, I couldn't feel the characters. It just didn't grasp the period, and felt forced. It left me feeling unfocused, as though I couldn't get into each of the different mother's heads. Simply hearing about the Roosevelt's and their loss, staring at the empty grave on the grounds of the estate, did more for me than the feelings evoked in the book.

This was ordered for a book club discussion group. I didn't really care for the book. It was a fictionalized account of a program that was much admired. After reading it I went to the internet and read many websites about the gold star program and learned some things about the gold star mothers that I didn't know. This book showed a multicultural group of mothers, most of whom seemed to have many problems that they had not been taught to keep to themselves. They just seemed dysfunctional. Also, I didn't think it helped the story to show a two generational illegitimate start in life. Even the military leaders of the group were miscast for this program. I think the mother of the five Sullivan boys who died on the same ship and others similar to her would have been more to my liking.