Book Report #200 The Stars Are Fire

The Stars Are Fire by Anita Shreve

Anita Shreve is a brilliant writer, who has never wavered in her ability to create breathtaking masterpieces that take the shape of novels. They leave the reader tender and changed. One does not put down an Anita Shreve novel and just carry on with her day. Time must be set aside to sit and fully be rocked.

In The Stars Are Fire, Grace lives with her husband Gene and two children, Claire and Tom, in a beachfront town in Maine in the 1940s. Her marriage is strained and the two barely talk. Sometimes Grace counts the words Gene says to her in a day, and sometimes the number is two. There's an awful evening where he abuses her sexually, and she becomes pregnant.

A serious drought sets in, and Maine becomes a tinder box, waiting to ignite. When it inevitably does, the fire rips through the state, pushing people toward the ocean. It comes to Grace's house when Gene is trying to make a firebreak to save the town. She has to flee to the ocean with her two children.

After the harrowing night, they are saved, and their lives are forever altered. Gene does not come back, and Grace wonders if he's taken this as his opportunity to escape. She must step up and take care of her children. Once she has healed from hypothermia and losing her baby, she takes her children and her mother to her late mother-in-law's mansion for refuge. She gets a job as a receptionist at a doctor's office. She takes on a boarder and enjoys his company. Grace's life is pretty good for once. She begins to understand happiness.

But a burned up and angry Gene returns, and it's all smashed to bits. Grace must dig into her reserves yet again and find the strength to be the heroine her children need.

General consensus: I was hooked in and then gutted. I had to tell my family what was going on in the story because it felt so real. Classic Shreve. Gorgeous, moving, and haunting.