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The Stars are Fire
Anita Shreve
Little, Brown, $29.99
In October 1947, wildfire tore through the US state of Maine. Sixteen people were killed and many more homes destroyed. In Anita Shreve's powerful and accomplished novel, based on these events, the fictional small town of Hunts Beach is entirely destroyed, and survivor Grace Holland has nothing left but her children, whose lives, as well as her own, she has saved by half-burying them all in sand at the water's edge. Grace's strange, unpleasant husband has gone missing in the fire, and she shows great resourcefulness and intelligence in putting her life back together and in sounding new depths of experience. Shreve's account of the fires is terrifying, and her portrait of a bad marriage almost equally so. Her recreation of post-war, pre-feminist American society is a model of elegant restraint, deep feeling, skilful characterisation, and a richly evocative sense of place.