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  • Published: 15 September 2014
  • ISBN: 9780307948809
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $32.99

A Star for Mrs. Blake



April Smith focuses her story on five women, who meet just before their journey begins: Katie McConnell, an Irish maid from Dorchester, Massachusetts; Minnie Seibert, wife of an immigrant Russian Jewish chicken farmer; Bobbie Olsen, a wealthy Boston socialite; Wilhelmina Russell, a former tennis star in precarious mental health; and Cora Blake, a single mother and librarian from coastal Maine. In Paris, Cora meets a journalist whose drug habit helps him hide from his own wartime fate-facial wounds so grievous he's forced to wear a metal mask. This man will change Cora's life in wholly unexpected ways. And when the women finally travel to Verdun to visit the battlegrounds where their sons fought as well as the cemeteries where they are buried, shocking events--a death, a scandal, a secret revealed--will guarantee that Cora's life and those of her traveling companions will become inextricably intertwined. Only now will they be able to emerge from their grief and return home to their loved ones. This is a timeless story set against a footnote of history, little known but unforgettable.

An emotionally charged historical novel based on the Gold Star Mothers.

Cora Blake never dreamed she’d go to Paris. She’s hardly ever left the small fishing village where she grew up. Yet in the summer of 1931, she is invited to travel to France with hundreds of other Gold Star Mothers, courtesy of the U.S. government, to say goodbye to their fallen sons, American casualties of World War I who were buried overseas.

Chaperoned by a dashing West Point officer, Cora’s group includes the wife of an immigrant chicken farmer; a housemaid; a socialite; a former tennis star in precarious mental health; and dozens of other women from all over the country. Along the way, the women will forge lifelong friendships as they face a death, a scandal, and a secret revealed.

  • Published: 15 September 2014
  • ISBN: 9780307948809
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

April Smith

April Smith is a major Hollywood scriptwriter and producer. In addition to Cagney and Lacey she is the writer/producer of four distinguished TV movies: Best Kept Secrets; Ernie Kovass; Between the Laughter; Love Lives On and Taking Back my Life: The Nancy Ziegenmayer Story. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her husband and two children.

Also by April Smith

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Praise for A Star for Mrs. Blake

  • "Brings graceful life to a wrongly forgotten historical footnote." --Entertainment Weekly
  • "A beautifully composed, elegantly written tale of a very strong, very vivid and utterly unforgettable woman on a terrible journey." --The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  • "A heartfelt glimpse into a little-known episode in U.S. history... Captivating and enlightening." --Booklist (starred review)