Anita Shreve's Final Gift to her Readers

Unless her family uncovers a partially completed manuscript, "The Stars Are Fire" is most likely Ms. Shreve's last novel. Her death last month at the age of seventy-one came as a shock to me. It seemed one could always rely on a new book every two or three years and they were consistently good. Is it because she's gone that this one seems exceptional? I don't know. I can only tell you that, like the horrific fires that tore through the state of Maine in 1947, this novel begins slowly and builds to a terrible crescendo.

There's something special about fire and man's relationship to it. It can be mesmerizing and terrifying at the same time, its power and relentlessness an insurmountable obstacle. And during that searing summer and autumn of 1947 with the threat of fire a daily constant, tensions simmered between Grace and her inexplicably sullen husband Gene. It was almost a relief when news of the smoldering forests first spread and Gene joined the men of Hunts Beach in an effort to build a fire break around the town.

Shreve allows us to become intimately acquainted with Grace. We spend time in her head and have access to her complicated, intelligent thoughts as she goes through her humdrum days, finding joy in her two babies, Claire and Tom, in the smell of fresh laundry, or the first pull on a cigarette during a stolen moment at the water's edge with her dear friend Rosie.

But as the fires encroach on the town and Gene fails to return to his family, (was this his opportunity to disappear for good?) Grace has to use all her strength and brains to save her family. Historical records indicate that over twenty five hundred people were left homeless in Maine that fall. Our fictional Grace was one of them. How does one even begin to rise up from the ashes of such devastation?

It's a thrill to watch Grace fashion a life for herself and her children, talk her way into a job though she's never held one in her life, finagle a great deal on an automobile from a sexist car salesman, and basically learn to love herself and her body after years of disdainful condescension from her former husband. It's difficult to read of the abuse Grace suffered at Gene's whim, especially the insidious way that power, at a time when women had none and men had it all, was at its core. Disparate male/female relationships are Shreve's specialty and this book packs an emotional punch.