The Stars are Fire
I think I have read all of Anita Shreve’s novels; indeed I have them all as actual books (not e-books, except for this last, which I am reviewing for Netgalley) in our home library. Shreve comes from Massachusetts where so many wonderful novelists come from. Her first novel, Eden Close, was published in 1989; the novel that “broke her out”, The Pilot’s Wife was published in 1999 and was an Oprah Bookclub pick; and she has just published her eighteenth novel, The Stars are Fire. I read it in almost one session (with a few hours of sleep between…) which is a sign that I loved it. It is one of her best, I think.

The story, like many of Shreve’s books, is set in New England; this one on the coast of Maine during a drought in 1947. The protagonist is Grace Holland, married—stoically—to Gene, a quantity surveyor and a man she married—or more accurately, who married her— because she was pregnant with his child. It soon becomes apparent that he is a bully, and has a dark past. They struggle to make ends meet. Grace is a housewife of the times, mother to two young children. The catastrophe that propels the real story forward is based on a true and horrific event; wildfires that ripped through and destroyed many communities along this stretch of coast, with many lives and homes lost. Gene leaves with Tim, the husband of her best friend, Rosie, to join the fire-fighters, and Grace and Rosie flee to the edge of the ocean where by spending the night buried in the wet sand and shallow water with a wet blanket covering them they somehow survive. Grace loses the child she is carrying and it seems as if Gene will never return. He was last seen walking into the fire.

The rest of the story is that of a woman who finds herself as she struggles to survive. There is a love story, beautifully and sparingly told, a terrible twist, and an ending that I will not reveal.

Shreve is a powerful writer, with the ability to write from inside her characters, to tell a dramatic story with quiet grace and devastating truthfulness. This is a feminist story about the societal restrictions of those times, and of a woman who, when faced with few options and two children to protect, takes flight.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.