About this item
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.
About the Author
Yes, I'm the same April Smith who writes the FBI Special Agent Ana Grey Mystery/Thrillers but I've taken a new direction into suspenseful historical fiction. My latest novel, HOME SWEET HOME, takes place in 1950s South Dakota, where a family becomes the victim of a witch hunt during the McCarthy era. A STAR FOR MRS. BLAKE, set in the 1930s, tells the untold true story of the Gold Star Mothers pilgrimages to Europe to visit the graves of their loved ones killed during WWI. Where do I get such wide-ranging ideas? I grew up in the Bronx, New York, where the Kingsbridge Road Branch public library was the center of my universe. There it was safe and warm -- the library was a tiny space above a dry cleaners -- and I was free to explore everything from science fiction to James Bond. I moved to Los Angeles to write for TV shows like Cagney and Lacey, but I am still, firmly and forever, happy in the world of books.
