> HISTORICAL FICTION: LINDA DIEBEL
THE EVENING CHORUS Helen Humphreys HarperCollins, 294 pages, $28.99
Sometimes a fictional character is so powerful I read the last pages of a book at a glacial pace to stall the inevitable ending. In The Evening Chorus, awardwinning Canadian writer Helen Humphreys has created four unforgettable characters whose lives intersect.
She does it with a masterful choice of scenes in a literary volume that spans the years 1940 to 1950. We meet James, an English RAF officer shot down in the first full year of the Second World War and held in a German PoW camp, his young wife Rose living in their Sussex cottage, Toby, a flying officer who meets Rose while stationed near her home, and James’s sister Enid, who stays with Rose after she’s bombed out in the London blitz.
Prisoners-of-war struggle to find tools to survive and the answer for James lies in the study of a pair of redstarts building a nest on a wall outside the camp. He chronicles every detail in his little notebook: the number of trips the birds make with twigs, feathers and bits of fur for their nest, the eggs that soon appear, and the baby birds with gullets thrust skyward.
His passion brings him to the attention of the camp commandant who appears to want to hold on to his own humanity in such a bleak and brutal place.
Her life, and ultimately that of her husband, are impacted when she meets Toby and by her sister-in-law’s arrival — in ways not at first obvious.
Humphreys creates characters that are achingly human, and thus sympathetic. Even minor characters are memorable and descriptions of Rose’s dog Harris are laugh-out-loud entertaining.
The natural world offers solace for each character, whether James’s redstarts, the rabbit that’s so significant for Rose and Toby or the wild horse that fascinates Enid.
The question is whether these gifts offer sufficient grace to counter the flaws of human nature.
A TOUCH OF STARDUST By Kate Alcott Random House, 296 pages, $29.95
FADE IN: A back lot at Selznick International Pictures in Los Angeles, December 1938, during the filming of the “Atlanta burning” scene from Gone with the Wind. DISSOLVE TO: Young woman with red hair stumbles in high heels as she runs to the observation tower with a message for her new boss, David O. Selznick.
She’s Julie Crawford, Indiana-born Smith graduate and new arrival in Hollywood with a dream of writing for the movies. JULIE: “I have to get to Mr. Selznick.” L.A. fireman, face red from the fire’s heat: “Honey, can’t you see he’s busy keeping us busy? Stay back — that’s an order.” * So might a screenplay for Kate Alcott’s
A Touch of Stardust begin. This lively read with its cinematic scenes cry out for blockbuster movie treatment.
It helps that Alcott tells Julie’s story against the drama of Selznick’s most famous film and that Clark Gable and Carole Lombard soon become her friends.
The book mixes fact and fiction and teems with star power, from Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh to the woman who got it all down right or wrong, Louella Parsons.
Moreover, author Patricia O’Brien (writing under her pseudonym Kate Alcott) had an insider’s seat to Old Hollywood buzz. Her late husband Frank Mankiewicz came from an illustrious family of Tinseltown luminaries.
Author of the New York Times bestseller The Dressmaker, she weaves the romance of Julie and assistant producer Andy Weinstein with two legendary love stories, Gable and Lombard, and Rhett and Scarlet.
There’s more than a touch of stardust here. It’s liberally sprinkled on every page.
Linda Diebel is a journalist and non-fiction
writer.