{"product_id":"a-star-for-mrs-blake-isbn-9780307948809","title":"A Star for Mrs. Blake","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn emotionally charged historical novel based on the Gold Star Mothers.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCora 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChaperoned 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.“\u003ci\u003eA Star for Mrs. Blake\u003c\/i\u003e is a beautifully written, meticulously researched slice of American history. April Smith’s poignant and tender story of five courageous World War I Gold Star mothers’ amazing journey across the sea is one you will never forget.” —Fannie Flagg\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Smith] brings graceful life to a wrongly forgotten historical footnote.” —\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Detailed and colorful . . . A story of America—rich in the lives of each of the characters.” —\u003ci\u003ePittsburgh Post-Gazette\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Vivid and utterly unforgettable..” —\u003ci\u003eThe Globe and Mail \u003c\/i\u003e(Toronto)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Compelling. . . . A first-rate novel that is well worth reading.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Huffington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “Moving and surprising. . . . Smith, a lucid writer with a detective’s eye for detail, doesn’t let us forget the painful event that launched her heroine’s journey.” —\u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  “A sensitively drawn portrait of an obscure but consequential event. It is also a story that highlights the power of female community, how that bond can help mitigate even a grief that has no end.” —WBUR.org \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “April Smith has written a beautiful and unforgettable novel about five Gold Star Mothers whose stories are both personal and universal. Writing \u003ci\u003eA Star for Mrs. Blake\u003c\/i\u003e must have been a labor of love and it shows on every page. Everyone who has served or is serving in the military, and also their families and friends, should read this book.” —Nelson DeMille\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Smith writes with great depth of detail and of emotion, giving voice to . . . [these] Gold Star Mothers who traveled from America to their sons’ graves in France.” —\u003ci\u003eHistorical Novel Society \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Riveting. . . Smith has told this story with memorable characters and truly beautiful writing.” —\u003ci\u003eHudson Valley News\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Smith captures the mothers’ interactions in beautiful detail.” —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Captivating and enlightening. . . . A heartfelt glimpse into a little-known episode in U.S. history.” —\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)April Smith is the author of the successful novels featuring FBI Special Agent Ana Grey as the central character. She is also an Emmy-nominated television writer and producer. In her research for \u003ci\u003eA Star for Mrs. Blake, \u003c\/i\u003eshe traveled to Maine, New York City, Paris, Verdun, and the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery. Her home base is Santa Monica, California, where she lives with her husband. \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eExcerpted from the hardcover edition\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFebruary\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCora Blake was certainly not planning on going  to Paris that spring. Or ever in her lifetime. She was the librarian in a  small town on the tip of an island off the coast of Maine, which didn’t  mean she’d never traveled. She did spend two years at Colby College in  Waterville and visited family in Portland, went to Arizona once, and if  you counted yachting, knew most of the New England coast. Her mother had  been the great adventurer, married to a sea captain who’d taken her all  around the world. Cora was born off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, which  might account for her venturesome spirit, but now she roamed only in  books. Summer people from North Carolina and Boston would stop by the  quaint old library building to chat, and wonder how she could stand to  live in such a tiny place with those terrible winters.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I have  everything I want right on the island,” she’d say. “We’re so off the  beaten path, you’ve got to be satisfied with the way it is.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSince  the crash of ’twenty-nine the county had stopped paying her salary, but  Cora kept on librarying anyway, two days and one morning a week, for  free. She did it for the sociability and out of duty to her readers, but  she was as hard up for cash as anybody. That’s why when the whistle  started blowing at the break of dawn out at Healy’s cannery, it sounded  to Cora Blake like Gabriel himself swinging out on the horn.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt  was 5:00 a.m. in the pit of February. The cannery had been silent for  more than two weeks, but now the whistle was loud and clear, piercing  the bleat of the foghorn. Wake up! it shrilled. There’s work! and  throughout the village women rose up out of warm beds wondering how much  work there would be and how long they might be gone doing it. The  length of the job depended on the catch. Clams, as long as they’re  watered down at night, will be fine until the next day—but fish has to  be put up right away or it will spoil. They could end up packing  twenty-four hours straight, which nobody would moan about at a time when  the Great Depression had taken away so many jobs, but they had just  thirty minutes to dress and put out food for the family before the  second whistle started up, scolding them to get out the door. By then  the worker-transportation bus would be leaving from in front of the post  office, and if you missed it, well, good night and good luck.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn  the top bedroom of one of the old stonecutter’s cottages facing the  harbor—mustard-yellow, with squares for windows like a child would  draw—Cora was rapidly calculating four meals ahead. Life had changed  since she’d left Tide’s End Farm, a hundred acres that had been in the  family since 1759. Five years ago, her mother, Luella, and older sister,  Avis, had passed from cholera, and Cora moved to town in order to look  after her nieces, Sarah, fourteen, Laura, twelve, and Kathleen, ten. Now  the farm lay derelict and far from her mind. There were the three girls  plus her brother-in-law to cook for, and all she had in quantity was  beans.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMost people can’t tell the difference between one bean and  another. Most don’t give a hoot. North of Ellsworth anyway, a lot of  folks were making it through hard times on the Marafax beans supplied by  the federal government, chewy amber-colored little things that prudent  types cooked only with salt. Cora had gone up to the city and gotten  some, along with margarine you had to mix by hand with yellow coloring,  so it didn’t look like dental wax. They still had turnips and squash in  the cellar hay mow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe woke Sarah, who was sprawled beside her  in a dead pile under the quilts, and gave her the lowdown. Aunt Cora was  going on a pay streak and, as the oldest, Sarah would be in charge of  the household, most of which was laid up with flu. Sarah didn’t move.  She wasn’t sick, but her eyes remained shut on principle.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Can I make biscuits?” she asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I  don’t want to see a speck of wasted flour when I get home,” Cora  warned. “And no cigarettes. Don’t think I won’t know, because I can  smell them on you.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe girl uttered something befitting a  half-asleep adolescent, but Cora was already across the frigid bedroom.  It was impossible to keep warm without coal. Her brother-in-law, Big Ole  Uncle Percy, had started cutting wood off someone else’s parcel, but  what could you do? Rags stuffed under the doors did nothing to stop the  glacial drafts that swept down from Nova Scotia. She looked to the  window to gauge the day; the glass was scrolled with the roseate frost  of dawn. Outside the snow was fresh and it was well below freezing, but  Cora was cheered to see there would be sun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe pulled a pair of  woolen stockings from the cedar chest. They had been patched up so often  they had acquired the combined character of the three generations who  had worn them, which meant they belonged to nobody, and were seen by  Cora not with sentiment, but as a handy something to be pulled over her  shoes, followed by galoshes that had been resewn where the rubber split.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEntering  the icy kitchen, Cora was grateful for the millionth time to her  pragmatic mother. She had sailed through the Panama Canal as Captain  Frederick Harding’s wife on the windjammer Lara Leigh, delivering  molasses and timber and sometimes chartered for the pleasure of wealthy  businessmen in Florida, but it was hardly as glamorous as it sounded.  Her duties were to cook, sew, and clean the cabin, and to be pleasant  company for the wives at the yacht clubs where they moored. When they  returned to Tide’s End Farm, Luella raised Cora and her sister with the  self-reliance she’d learned at sea. She taught them, for example, that  no matter if you were tired and falling off your feet, you always got  the stove ready before you went to bed. Mostly it was an island  tradition for the man of the house to lay the fire, but Captain Harding  would be gone on voyages for months, and so it became a mother-daughter  ritual every night to whittle sticks of winter pine into clean-smelling  curls.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“No need for kerosene a’tall,” her mother would say with satisfaction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen  she was little, it was Cora’s job to stack the kindling neatly in the  fire box, a thing she loved to do, because once the iron door was  latched, the day would come to a quiet close with the reassuring  knowledge that Mother had taken care of today, tonight, and tomorrow.  Every night she did the same for her nieces, using the sharp old  jackknife to turn out perfect spirals before their captivated eyes. It  still gave her a feeling of being in safekeeping. And in the morning the  stove always lit with just one match.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe got the kettle  steaming and this she poured into another kettle of those reliable  beans. She lit a lantern on the oilcloth-covered table. The light fell  on the lush jacket illustration of Treasure Island, which was sitting on  top of the pile she’d brought home for the kids who were sick in bed.  One thing about librarying is you can take home whatever you please off  the shelves, and since she was the only one keeping the place open, Cora  felt perfectly in the right doing so. Treasure Island was one of her  favorites. She dragged her fingertips over the book as if to take it all  in, even the feel of the type. She knew the story by heart—her father  had read it out loud to her, she’d read it to her son, Sammy, and later  on he’d read it back to Grandpa Harding—about young Jim Hawkins and his  indomitable mother, who runs the Admiral Benbow Inn. One day a  mysterious old sailor named Pew shows up to end his days in peace by the  sea, but he’s given the terrible “black spot,” a warning that means  death, and sure enough, the pirates attack the inn, and Jim and his  mother barely escape—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe second whistle startled her back to  life, and she hastily swallowed a last bite of corn bread. What had she  been dreaming of? She checked to be sure the beans were simmering  nicely, took her mackinaw from its peg, and closed the kitchen door  firmly against the wind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHer eyes watered as the cold hit. It  wasn’t just the cold, but the blinding attack of whiteness that mirrored  off the ice-encrusted snow. Navigating the granite slope from the  doorstep to Main Street was perilous, especially buffeted by a screaming  northeast wind. She caught on to a clothesline and edged down. Rows of  whitecaps marched across the harbor. Icicles hung off the pier, sharp as  staves. The frost-blue sky wheeled above, hard in the light of a  heatless sun. Her nose ran and teeth ached from the bitter temperature.  Nothing moved in the village except snow-smoke billowing off the roofs  of the chain of severe wooden cottages implausibly anchored to a finger  of rock. Their closed white faces took the pummeling directly off the  ocean and said nothing. It was as if everything had frozen into a  crystal of itself and Cora Blake was the only warm and living thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen  she saw that she had missed the bus. Because there was certainly no  bright red little puffer waiting in front of the post office; no black  exhaust stains on the snow, or tire tracks, either, had she been  composed enough to notice. Cora almost cried. Being late, she had just  thrown away a dollar and a half, tossed it to the breeze. Marooned at  the snowbound post office with no way to get out to the factory, she  raged at her dawdling over a child’s book, numb fingers clenched inside  the pockets of the plaid mackinaw so worn it might have come from the  Scottish Highlands with her forebears.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHell, she would walk.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  shore road was open to rolling gusts off the harbor that pierced the  poor wool of the ancient mackinaw and swept clouds of dry snow off the  wooden sidewalk ahead. A skiff had broken loose, tossed up and smashed  against the wharf. But the square-built lobster boats rode the  twenty-foot waves like smart-aleck tough guys, chins out. Cora put one  foot in front of the other, eyes fixed on the crest of Peaks Hill,  methodically getting past the hooded shapes of the variety store,  barbershop, the notions and yard goods store—all shuttered with snow—the  sawmill, the Odd Fellows Hall out on the bend, until the village was at  her back and the wind died wailing in the spruce.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt would be  deep snowfall all the way to the point. Cora was hoping for an easy trek  on the tire tracks left by the bus, but there were none—erased by  whirling devils of ice particles? Or had she gotten off the road  entirely? She took in the silence, unafraid. It went with a certain hum  in her head that was always there, a nameless sense of direction that  seemed to come from the earth up through the soles of her feet. She  became aware of jaybirds. Evergreens standing in unspoiled snow up to  their skirts. She noticed a patch of shadows, dug up by something,  possibly moose. Closer, she saw they were shoe prints, multiple tracks  heading east. Cora thrashed forward, snow sliding down the galoshes. At  the top of Peaks Hill she saw a small group of cannery workers trudging  through the endless white like anxious refugees. By the time she’d  reached them, she was sweating in the woolens and couldn’t feel her  toes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey were women dressed as she was, in heavy dark skirts down to their ankles and hodgepodge layers of tattered coats.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Where is the bus?” Cora asked, breathless.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ain’t  no bus. Not no more,” snapped Essie Jordan. With her long bland face  sticking out beneath a cap that was crocheted with green filigree, she  resembled a bunch of celery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What happened to it?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Mr. Healy says gasoline’s too expensive. So we walk.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“We  walk,” echoed Cora, grateful to join the march of plain-featured,  hardworking ladies in homespun clothes that smelled of cow dung and pine  pitch, ages twelve to sixty, trooping along in the snow to do the  filthy factory work of the republic—slow, resolute, keeping in a tight  group to buffer the wind, the young ones breaking trail for the rest.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt  was another mile to where the continental bedrock ends, a rocky ledge  that slopes into the water, the cannery looking like it was about to  slide off the tip. She thought about a cup of tea with sugar when the  sandwich man came. It was just a distraction of mind. She wouldn’t spend  two cents on herself for a cup of tea.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter a while the sun  bowed out behind a bank of fog and the air grew dense and bitter cold.  Nearing the ocean, the drifts thinned away, showing outcrops of basalt  lying sideways in the empty fields where they’d been dumped a millennium  ago, and soon there was more road than snow beneath their feet. When  the shape of a somber little chapel appeared in the mist, they knew they  had reached the farthest crossroads, and from there it was just half a  mile to go along a cobble beach before they caught sight of the  smokestack and double roof of the cannery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCora was to cut the  heads and tails off sardines with a scissors. It was a job she had done  since childhood, and her nieces would have been there too, if they  weren’t home sick. The first thing she did was to tape her fingers  because you had to press hard against the scissors in order to make two  strong cuts that severed the spine. More than two cuts would make Mr.  Healy mad. The fish flipped around dangerously, suffocating on air. The  heads were used for bait and went into one bucket, the bodies another.  The buckets were tended by the littlest girls. This was how one day at  the cannery Cora’s older sister, Avis, nearly cut off a thumb when she  was eight, chasing a dying sardine. Their mother, Luella, was on the  labeling machine down the other end, and Mr. Healy wanted her to stay  put, so he said nothing about the accident, shoving Avis out the door  and telling her to run home, halfway bleeding to death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLuella  was incensed when she found out, and told Mrs. Healy what her husband  had done. The next day he showed up with a bag of peppermints for Avis,  but it was only because Luella was a fast packer and saved him money in  the long run. Cora had inherited the knack. When the racks holding trays  of cooked sardines started coming out of the ovens on that February  day, Mr. Healy moved Cora Blake to the canning line. She could do fifty  cans in half an hour despite the stench and the rivers of gurry—gray  sludge of wasted fish heads and entrails—they were forced to stand in.  For every tray you finished you put a wooden token in the jar. Cora  wasn’t sorry to put those scissors down; her sleeves were already all  stiffened up with the juices and lifeblood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe cannery shook  with the impact of waves breaking just below. Spume off the whitecaps  spit right through gaps in the rotted wood. Inside it was cold as an  icebox, except for scalding fits of steam when the oven doors were  opened. Despite tolerating the treacherous conditions, Mr. Healy  enforced the regulation that employees must wear aprons and coverings  over their hair. None were provided, so women brought their  own—bandannas and boudoir caps would do—resulting in some odd costumes.  Cora kept the mackinaw on, along with a sunbonnet tied beneath her chin,  so the ribbons wouldn’t get caught in the machinery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was just  her luck to be on the assembly line across from Mrs. Celery Face, Essie  Jordan, president of the Martha Washington Benevolent Society. Martha  Washington was a temperance society, which meant a hodgepodge of angry  wives who were fed up with living with drunken men. The men wouldn’t  listen to them, so they turned to other women, in the hope that  collective female power would get them to behave. Some, like Essie  Jordan, seemed mad as hell at just about everything. Her small cunning  blue eyes said, I’m still here and don’t you forget it!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I’m  telling you for your own good,” Essie said. She had to shout above the  clatter. “Your brother-in-law is askin’ for it, right out flaunting the  law.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Just what are you referring to?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith Big Ole Uncle  Percy there were always possibilities: stealing wood, stealing lobster  traps, spitting, shooting at the racket boys from Portland—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I’m referring,” Essie said archly, “to importing illegal alcohol. As if you didn’t know.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAh  yes, that too. But Big Ole Uncle Percy was only getting his small draft  of the spoils of Prohibition, brisk business on the craggy coast of  Maine. You could hide a Canadian steamer loaded with booze in those  coves, where bootleggers had radio stations to warn the ships, and  armored cars to deliver the goods to upstanding Republicans at private  clubs in Bangor. Percy was just the chump in the rowboat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Everybody knows,” Cora said mildly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Don’t mean we have to stand for it.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA  secondary conveyer belt was grinding into action, moving rows of  flashing cans. The edges were razor sharp. Cora would not give Essie  Jordan the satisfaction of drawing blood and kept her eyes on her work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Essie,  it’s no shame that your own husband was arrested for disturbing the  peace. He’s not the only man who likes to take a drink.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe blue eyes fired. “That’s not true.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Nobody cares, Essie.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Men  are weak. That’s why decent women fight against the devil alcohol. You  think it don’t affect you because you ain’t married.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“You know  full well my husband died. It was a long time ago,” Cora added with a  twist of bitterness. “Maybe so long you don’t remember.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I know you was married,” Essie sneered. “The point is, now you ain’t.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt  was afternoon and the sandwich man did not come. Mr. Healy patrolled  the tables in the rubber apron he always wore, tweed cap on his swelled  head. Cora’s neck ached and she was thirsty. There were no good memories  in this reeking place. Even in fair weather, even while their mother  was alive, the cannery yard was cluttered with mountains of decaying  vegetable matter and clamshells fought over by swarming birds. Mr. Healy  counted the ocean as his garbage dump and the tide as his street  sweeper, but nature didn’t always oblige, and the facility was usually  surrounded by scarlet pools of fish gore. This was the summer playground  for the village kids, where they threw rocks at wild cats and raccoons.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  trays of fish kept coming. The cans kept flashing past. Essie’s snide  little jab had been aimed at Cora’s friendship with Linwood Moody, a  sweet-tempered soil scientist she’d known since high school, who’d  recently lost his wife in a car accident. They’d been seen around town  together, so what? You call bean supper in the church basement a tryst?  Still, Cora’s stomach clenched at the unprovoked attack. How could a  person be so put off all the time? It was like Essie Jordan ate mustard  for breakfast. There was only one way to put the poor lonely woman out  of her misery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Essie?” Cora shouted. “How’s your rugging coming?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEssie  was an expert in the art of making rag rugs. Her coils were pulled so  tight it was like she turned old bedsheets into steel cables.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Comin’ fine, I guess.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Mrs. Grimble said you’re making braided chair seats for the spring fair.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“That’s right. Round ones.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What kinds of colors?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Blues, mostly. Got some nice bright purple from a housedress that belonged to Aunt Dot.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Memories in every braid, isn’t that the truth?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I suppose.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I  find it calms the heart.” With no response from Essie, Cora plunged  ahead: “Say, did you know I’m going to be chairman of the July Fourth  church fair?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ain’t you always?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCora bit her lip and let  it pass. “I’m thinking we could use some help,” she went on. “How would  you like to take over on the crafts committee?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEssie blinked several times. Her eyes scanned the room with suspicion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“You’re asking me to run it?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Nobody knows more about rugging and weaving than you. I’ll bet you could draw in some good people. What do you say?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEssie  took her time in answering. Something like this—although she’d never  admit it—she wanted to keep close to her chest as long as possible;  prolong the warmth and softness before it bolted off like one of her  black cats. Just then, the steamy room was filled with daylight.  Everyone looked up in surprise. The big door had been slid open and the  town postmaster, Eli Grimble, stood in the open space. He’d come on his  horse and sleigh, and the stomping of the thick-coated animal and the  ringing of its harness were like silent pictures as the clanking of the  machinery overtook all other sounds.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMr. Healy strode up and  shook his hand, expecting a bundle of mail, but Eli Grimble kept peering  into the dimness and gesturing until he sighted Cora Blake. No doubt he  found her easily. She had been staring right at him as if with some  kind of second sense. After a moment Mr. Healy motioned that she step  forward and the eyes of all the other packers followed. Now she was  outside in the cold fresh air and the drifts of snow were tinged with  sunset.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Went by your house—” Eli began.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What’s wrong? Are the children all right?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Yes, not to worry, your niece said you were out here, so I thought to come. You have a letter. From the U.S. government.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe held out an official envelope with her name neatly typed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The government? Whatever for?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMr. Healy leaned over her shoulder. “Paid your taxes, Mrs. Blake?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Of course I paid my taxes!” Cora said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen  she realized the letter was from the War Department she had an  unnerving sensation, as if the ground was tilting under her feet. It was  just the same as thirteen years ago, when the envelope had contained a  handwritten note in pencil from someone named Harris in the Adjunct  General’s Office saying that Samuel Blake, her only child, had been  killed in action in Montfaucon, France. The letter had been delivered by  Eli Grimble, with this same horse and a two-wheeled buggy. There’d been  no snow yet, as it was October, near the end of the war. Eli Grimble  had come all the way out to Tide’s End Farm to deliver the news, along  with the minister and Doc Newcomb.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What’s going on?” Mr. Healy asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe postmaster shrugged. “Seems important.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCora  tore the envelope open and made them wait while she took her time  reading it. Then she read it again, just to be sure. Finally she looked  up from the letter and smiled broadly, maybe the first time she’d ever  looked happy in that place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I won’t be needing work this spring, Mr. Healy.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Pleased to know that, Mrs. Blake. Meanwhile, you got plenty of work today,” he said, and walked toward the factory.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Don’t you care to know the reason why?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEli Grimble leaned close. “You can tell me,” he offered, the biggest gossip in town.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Mr. Healy!” she called with exuberance she’d never dared before.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“There’s a reason why.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe boss dug his boots into the slush and turned with exaggerated patience.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I guess you’re going to tell me whether I like it or not. All right. Why?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I’m going on a trip.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA  group of curious packers had gathered in the doorway. Cora said it loud  enough that all of them could hear. Especially Essie Jordan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I’m going to Paris,” she announced. “On an ocean liner. First-class.”A Novel","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304828621029,"sku":"NP9780307948809","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307948809.jpg?v=1767720816","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/a-star-for-mrs-blake-isbn-9780307948809","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}